Module 2 - Points to Ponder

What are the primary goals of creating a building model? Who are the key stakeholders?

• What do they need?
• Generally I would say that the key stakeholders are the project team, and the project client(s). What they both need at large, and what is incredibly important, is the ability to come to a similar understanding/be on the same page. BIM provides that in some very technical ways across the project team, but then also allows the team to communicate their proposal with the client and quickly adjust to any changes.
• What do they care about most?
• The client likely cares primarily about two things: expenditure of resources (whether of time, money, etc.) and fidelity (of the design & structure). The project team cares about client satisfaction, but also being able to accomplish a project with minimal friction by remaining aligned with one another.

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...)
• It’s essentially organic marketing and high quality (theoretically) product/brand representation for the manufacturers to businesses of interest, and by extension, to consumers. Anyone who uses Revit has the potential to discover a manufacturer through these families. While creating/providing these families may not be free, since a lot of manufacturing involves digital models nowadays, it actually may be more cost effective than it was in the past to produce them (and the manufacturers would get greater value out of their creation).
• 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?
• Hopefully, their fidelity as well as the ability to better visually communicate with your client. One advantage (I’m assuming), is that the products represented within the manufacturer-provided families actually exist, so if a client really likes a certain product that’s represented in the proposal, the designers/developers can directly obtain it.

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?