The model is an office building for the project Physical Building Information Modeling (PBIM) for Solar Building Design and Simulation. I am working as a Graduate Research Assistant for the PBIM project at the Department of Architecture at Texas A&M University. The building has a floorplan of 50' X 100' and the longer side is facing towards the north and the south. I decided that the entrance will be on the west side. The roof is divided in two pieces and placed in different heights. The difference of heights allows the building to have a clerestory in the upper south wall. Also, the building has a strip of windows in the lower south wall and two strips of windows in the lower north wall.
I am doing thermal simulation with DOE-2.1e. The current building does not have an interior design yet. So, for this project I designed the interior space of the office building. I placed the center of the walls in the reference plane of the grid. I edited the boundary of the roof and offset it to create the overhangs. I had to attach the walls to the roof, because the roofs are not horizontal. Most of the walls are polygons but the north and the south walls. I duplicated and edited the materials for the Floor_1 and Floor_2, the Wall, the Ceiling_1 and the Roof_1.
-The materials used for the Floor_1 are: 4 in. concrete slab and 3/4 in. wood floor.
-The materials used for the Floor-2 are: 4 in. concrete slab and 3/4 in. tile over the slab.
-The materials used for the Wall_1 are (from outside to inside): 4 in. brick wall, 1/2 in. wood sheating, 4 in. thermal barrier for insulation and 1/2 in. gypsum wall board.
-The materials used for the Ceiling_1 are: 3 5/8 in. of metal - stud layer and 5/8 in. gypsum wall board.
-The materials used for the Roof_1 are: 1/2 in. asphalt shingles, 3/8 in. wood truss joist, 4 in. batt insulation and 3/4 in. wood.
FLOORPLAN
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| Original Floorplan |
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| (I added some windows to the north facade that are not considered in the original floorplan) |
SECTIONS
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| Section through Lobby and Storage room |
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| Section through Office room and Working space |
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| Section through Lobby, Storage room, Conference room and Working space |
COMMENTS RELATED TO THE PROJECT
I found some problems editing the existing furniture for the Working space of the office. There are around three different types of desks. I could not use the original one in all the cases, because the height of the partition was blocking the south window in the desks. Therefore, I had to edit (and erase in some cases) the partitions in the family. Also, I had to edit the desktop type and size in some desks. This is due to create the aisles (or walking area) inside the Working space. This is area that I spent more time to design than the others. I decided to create in this space the interior rendering that was requested for this project. It is the most significant space of the office.
Another problem that I found was the right kind of light fixtures. I could not find a light fixture to place on the roof. The only ones that I found were associated to a ceiling. The original office building does not have a ceiling. Therefore, I created a ceiling, so I can put the fixtures. Later, I created an interior render of this space. Unfortunately, I chose a lamp that did not work and the final render was dark. I could not edit or find how to solve this problem. Finally, I had to chose another lamp from the Revit library software. This solution altered my original idea. I wanted a lamp facing towards the ceiling and indirectly illuminating all the space. The final result turned to be like this: a lamp facing and directly illuminating all the space. I could not get the original lamp to "switch on".
The last problem was the design of the solar panel. Firstly, I loaded the solar panel from the Family folder from the Revit software. The idea was to put the panels on the roof facing south. I could not connect the solar panel to an angle parameter to change the position of the panel. Also, I could not solve the distance parameter to array the panel in the original position. Dr. Wei Yan suggested me to create a panel (with generic model) from scratch and attach it to a reference line. Therefore, I created the next parameters for the solar panel: PVAngle and Height. Later, I loaded this into a generic model - roof based. In this new family, I created the next parameters: Height, RoofWidth and Num (number of PVs).
To conclude, this is the first time I create a whole building with Revit. I have used AutoCAD and Sketchup in previous semesters. I feel Revit solves some problems that I have experienced before: has links and updates the floorplans with the sections and the elevations. It is a powerful tool that gives a quick feedback about the 3D design of the exterior and interior spaces of the project. Personally, I struggled a lot with the parametric and family design (solar panels and light fixtures). But, I am sure that after working for a while with the software, I will solve the problems faster.
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