What are the primary goals of creating a building model? Who are the key stakeholders?
- What do they need?
The key stakeholders are the clients, the architects, and the builders. The client needs a model that can accurately present the architects’ vision, and conversely, the architects need a way to accurately represent their vision. The people involved in construction need a precise and easy to understand blueprint to work off.
- What do they care about most?
The client cares most about envisioning themselves in the space, and BIM provides them with that by allowing them to see the space in 3D and move through the space as if they are there. The architects care most about accurately presenting their vision to convince the client and to ensure nothing gets lost in translation as the model gets constructed. The constructors care most about understanding how to make/purchase every component of the building quickly and easily.
How much detail should you include in your building model? How do you decide?
- As you develop your initial design?
- As you continue to iterate and develop on your design?
- What are the key stages?
- And how much detail should you include at each stage?
How much detail should you include about the composition (layers, materials, thicknesses) of your wall, floor, and roof assemblies at different stages of your design process?
- Conceptual design
- Preliminary design
- Design development
- Construction documentation
Many door and window manufacturers provide Revit families for doors and windows that you can specify for your building design.
- What is the advantage to manufacturers for providing these families? (it's not free to create and provide them...)
By providing families of their doors and windows, manufacturers are encouraging architects and other BIM modelers to include their product in their design. Because it is much easier and faster to upload pre-made Revit families than attempt to model them yourself from an image or dimensions, architects are more likely to pick a door or window that has already been modeled over a competitors which has not been modeled. Therefore, manufacturers are encouraging architects to commit to their product in the design phase, and thus also in the construction phase.
- What is the benefit to you as the designer of using these manufacturer-provided families? Is there an advantage to using them versus the families provided in the Revit library?
The advantage of using manufacturer-provided families is that it grounds your design in real life, and creates a more accurate model to entice the client and appease the people in charge of construction. This design will be much easier to translate to a real building and cheaper because no custom windows/doors will need to be constructed.
What are the advantages of getting the Revit component families (for furniture, equipment, and fittings) directly from the manufacturer versus from an online sharing website like RevitCity.com?
The manufacture likely to has more of their options available to choose from on their website than on RevitCity. Additionally, the families listed by the manufacturer could be more accurate and more up to date than families listed on online sharing websites.