Lucie Nordmann

Journal Entry For

Module 11 - Sharing Your Project

North Elevation

Overview

I really enjoyed diving deeper into Revit and sharpening my skills. I learned so much from this course and am excited to work more with Revit in the future

Key / Essential / Unique Design Features

Passive solar design
Sloping roof
Simple circulation/flow

It was important to me in my design to make the circulation straightforward. I made the corridor loop around the building core and choose not to include doors to other spaces within rooms.

Big Successes

Passive solar design

Summer Solstice. The shading from the roof provides enough coverage to keep the south windows covered to minimize heat gain.

Winter Solstice. The roof is set up to allow enough light into the building for warmth during the winter.

I have never had any experience on designing something that takes passive solar design into account. I learned so much about how different orientations affect different features of my building— this is a feature of my project that I am most proud of.

Buildable building

Once I was able to simplify my design, I was able to focus on correcting my mistakes in each module and dive deeper into analytics of my building. This helped me fully understand each module and not spend excess time debugging issues on Revit.

For the HVAC module, I was grateful that I took into account to leave room for a central air system in the center of my building. This made it easier to route the supply and return vents.

Multilevel similarities

Having the layout of your building be similar between floors is helpful in just about every unit. It simplifies design challenges with HVAC, structural, and plumbing.

Challenges

Restraining my Architectural wants

This was challenging for me. I wanted to create a unique building, with lots of open area (see my 1st design journal entry) and natural lighting. My model took many different forms over time in the beginning. Each new one compromised more of what I wanted architecturally for practicality and modeling purposes. I wish I had initially chosen a more simple design as this would have saved me time in the earlier weeks of the project.

Air Handler Location

I centered it in the middle of my building, my only option was to locate the air handler on the roof. This compromised my design, as I wanted the roof to be an open space. This module, in my opinion, was the hardest and most time consuming.

Plumbing extra walls

One thing I wish I did differently was arrange the Restrooms running long and narrow (having them be back to back versus side by side). I had to add walls to run the pipes behind

Structural Column locations

The sloping roof in my design gave me some trouble. I a lot of this was caused because my grid system didn't work even after copy monitoring it into my structural model. I had to individually place each column and some beams.

Lessons Learned

Utilize the Coordination Space in BIM 360! I wish I had used this during the structural module to see if my placement of columns would interfere with the flow of my building before carrying on with my design.
Plan to locate your Air Handler on the outer edge of the building for exhaust purposes. This with limit design complications.
Do not get caught up in what your want architecturally. You can model your amazing design later on when your Revit skills are more fine tuned. It is important to focus your energy