Project Summary

Final Building Model

My initial intention with this project for my Intelligent Buildings course was to explore aspects of Revit that I had not had previous experience in, with the additional intention of utilizing the finished project for the AEI Student Competition. It's likely that I would have created something similar for the competition had I not had the dual purpose of a term project. However, there is not a chance that I would have gone into such pain staking detail to suss out the detail of each individual component of the project through the use of online forums or the Revit handbook. Contrary to my belief, the only aspect of Revit Architecture that is similar to Revit MEP, was the general interface for the software. The task bars are organized in a similar fashion, which allowed my learning curve with the software to be a bit steeper than a novice user. However, in a general sense each individual activity was much more time consuming than I had anticipated. A breakdown of my time spent on each task had a similar format: 25% of my time was spent utilizing the technique I thought was correct (that typically didn't work out so well), another 25% of my time was spent researching the technique that I should actually utilize, and the final 50% of my time was spent implementing the proper techniques.

My first challenge was inherent in the fact that I began with existing floor plans. The building angles were many in number, and lining up each floor was not a painless experience. Once they appeared to fit together nicely, adding the walls was an easy enough task. Then came the stage where things were less cut and dry, adding several different kinds of windows. At the end of the project, there were eight different types of windows. Each derived from a basic Revit family: the "Instance - Fixed" window. Utilizing Revit's families that are initially included in the software to create new families saved me a great deal of time and effort. After adding the windows, I encountered the feat of adding topographical areas to the project. Once I realized that I could utilize AutoCAD plans, it made the general task a bit easier. Next came the test of creating seven different roof structures: two of which were green roofs, four of which were customized sloped roofs, and the last of which was a flat roof which intersected the sloped roof. My final task included interior finishes. Considering that the imperial library contained the majority of these items, it was just a matter of a couple of hours before I had populated the model with all of its furniture components.

Overall, this project proved to be an excellent exercise in gaining a better understanding of the number of components that architects put into the model previous to it be integrated with engineering components. This project has also left me with a better understanding of the number of changes that are required by architects in order to have a better functioning model, which is the basic struggle in understanding between architects and engineers on BIM projects. At the end of this series, I was left with the question: how did the time I spent on this project compare with that of the typical amount of time that architects spend on a project of a similar magnitude?