Crunching Areas in a Model

Architects are frequently hounded by the task of area tracking as they practice in the real functional and economic world.  Early in design, the  person drawing the design establishes, quantifies, parses, analyses, sorts, and re-sorts areas describing each function needed in a building. How to areas fit to opportunities for form?  How can and should areas be grouped, consolidated, separated?  And, of course, the bottom line, what area fits the budget? Building Information modeling is the ultimate tool to make this tracking work.

In past, drawings in the schematic design phase were famous for fudging the area numbers.  How else could the Architect draw up a guiding strategy as fast as the thought process, and arrive at the basic outline of the building plan? Design ideas come quickly, accurate accounting less so. The more complete the numbers, the more likely, with so much time invested in computation, that the plan becomes established and inflexible.  Hand sketched schematics require setting a scale to plan, and punching length and width into calculator. CAD improved the situation somewhat, with the ability to surround areas with a polyline that listed area. Facilities management programs can attach these areas to reports, but require extra steps not integrated into the design process as a whole.

Number crunching in Revit is straightforward, as shown in the Revit Wiki and the Revit Zone websites, citing two sources.  A building information model, as it is created in Revit, is at once a geometric, graphic and numerical data base.  On the plan level, a room is reported graphically bounded by walls or area separation lines.  This room can also be reported by any other of its properties, including its area, assigned department, occupancy, function, or anything else.  These properties can be sorted and reported in tables (like an excel spreadsheet), or in color coded plans alike.

Net Areas

The multi-clinic medical center shown is one example of design area tracking in Revit. When rooms are sorted by contribution to net area, the Architect can verify alignment to the user's program needs as a whole.  Using a ratio with gross area, the architect can test the efficiency of the proposed plan layout.  We can flexibly nudge walls, add, subtract, consolidate, rearrange, and test the patterns:  numerical feedback is immediate.  The graphics give us a clear picture of what is being accomplished, and may point out new directions.

Departments

Using the clinic center as an example, other properties can be assigned and tracked.  The designer as well as the building end user will want to see where individual clinics and their supporting services are proposed. The visual report in plan is immediate and convincing.  Drilling down yet further, we can see how sub-functions relate: private or public, served or served or serving.  Exam rooms and individual offices are the basic building blocks of this particular building program.  Lobbies, corridors, labs, toilets, and other functions serve these in the larger hierarchy of spaces.  These properties appear in tabulated, sort-able lists, and also can be tested and visualized with color coding in plan.

Functions

Many see the power of modeling for three dimensions early in the design process.  The model in Revit certainly provides this, as do many other software modeling packages like Sketch-up and 3dMax. Less tapped is the modeling of area early in planning,  This requires a true integrated building information modeler like Revit.

Revit and GIS

When in the throes of designing and organizing a new building, I am often struck with the notion that I am creating a map. Turns out there is an active debate on the subject: Graeme Martin of Spacial Vision covers the tip of the iceberg in BIM, CAD and GIS – what’s in a name? and cross references Dr. Anne Kemp's white paper “BIM isn’t Geospatial” …. Or is it?"   Is a Building Information Model, as produced in Revit, a small scale version of a Geographic Information System?  Are we on the way to an integration of the two?

The architect's lowly map correlates useful, interchangeable and connected information spatially, to rooms, architectural compositions, building systems, and individual building components.  Online, I have touched on debates about the merits of "little bim" vs. "Big BIM", the later being the highly interconnected, complex information database of sufficient magnitude to understand and manage larger issues of infrastructure.  I feel humbled with the vast promise of so-called little bim alone.  Just as google maps, the most accessible Geographic Information System around, has allowed us to explore a neighborhood or region, to navigate and learn,  Revit enables the design professional to travel through the design while it is being created.  

What are the real world examples of aggregated and coordinated models like mine in use in Big BIM?  I see it in sci-fi movies but tend to be skeptical that it is coming that soon. But, then again, I may be surprised some day when I zoom in real close to a building in Google Earth, and end up inside.

To BIM or not to BIM

Reflecting on an oft debated subject, I point to a well argued blog post:

(bim)x: Should This Project Be a "BIM Project"?.  The list presented weighs out costs and benefits, but two keys may be missing: flexibility and motivation.  A typical architectural firm, uninitiated in Building Information software (BIM), may well tick down the list to a resounding "no,"  When working in Connecticut, I was often reminded of an unofficial motto: "the State of Steady Habits". We are effective with old habits, and so it is hard to evolve to new tools.  In terms of leveraging new technology, how did it come about that the time honored use of the hand ledger was finally overtaken with automated spreadsheet?  In Architecture, what is the tipping point of moving from careful use of smaller amounts of personally thought out information to mapping out large quantities of interconnected data, both visual and quantitative?

Revit, Rev it, Revise it.

Rev It

According to Wikipedia, that great trove of obscure, often unsubstantiated facts, Revit, the architectural building information modeler, means Revise It.  To tell you the truth I had guessed it meant "speed it up" (e.g. "Rev up your engine").  Revise it makes more sense.  When we revise we are making adjustments based on new criteria. Parametric modelers (see my blog post, The Parametric Approach) revise as we think, as we learn. Less reason to "lock the drawings" and be tempted to become less responsive to disruptive new information as it bears on project.

Perhaps acceptance of parametric modeling among architects depends on temperament. Drafting culture has always relied on a "guardian" to keep a complex, linear document workflow together, taking top down direction from the designer and fleshing out the design in a predictable, linear manner. The new digital opportunity to comprehensively, logically, reliably improve a design at any stage of the work has opened a door for creative, rational types to stay involved throughout the process. The architect can apply substantial changes directly at any point in the process, which can either be taken as a threat to or breakthrough for efficient production. A different workflow presents itself, offering new ways to look at how and when to control the process of design documentation.

Revise It

In a way, BIM has always been with us. The earlier version has been "Build In your Mind," then translate to 2D representation. Going from personal vision to ink on velum has always been an an important, but often tedious process. This pattern changed with the new "Building Information Modeling" type of BIM.  Revit may or may not be faster than CAD, but is certainly more responsive. Changes can be mapped automatically to any and all drawing views or descriptions that are needed to keep the work up to date and coordinated The new tool can enable less linear, more collaborative ways of thinking. Architects now have the opportunity to revise the way we accomplish our work.