Complex site modelling. Just how much detail should be put in?

[pfrederico]

I have now been working on quite a complex model because my project (four buildings to be built inside a college campus) demand that the surroundings are modeled as well. I have been rising the college model from the provided dwg drawing of the site.

The problem is that oftenly what comes in the dwg isn't quite what's built in reality or cannot be made quite like it should be. A good example of this are stairs, which I've been founding to be rather hard to model correctly in revit (specially balausters).

I want to present 3d drawings and perspectives, along with the usual elevations and sections which, inevitably, will include parts of the campus site. Should I have to model the stairs as well? I've been founding it awkward and time consuming and I'm afraid that it's taking me just too much time to do it...

What would you do in my place?

I'll leave a picture of what I've already modeled so far. About 2/3 of the site.

[Andre Baros]

Generally, you only need to show enough of the surrounding site to understand the context as it relates to your building not build it or even understand how it was built. Personally I try to keep context very basic so that the building I'm working on stands out graphically. Existing grey, New black & white or even color.

Regarding details such as the baluster, will you need to match them on the new building? or are they simply more background? If they are not part of your building, then making them detailed will hurt you more than help, not only will it take time now, but it will take up memory later. Windows and doors are another typical example. Usually it's enough to get the size and location correct for coordination with the new building but getting too detailed makes it confusing to determine old from new when reading the drawings later on.

BTW The drawing of the campus looks good so far.

[pfrederico]

I'm thinking about just adding vertical accesses where they exist - ramps and stairs with no further balausters, unless it's part of where I'm going to be building something or it's connected to something I'm building.

Kind of a shame though, as I was looking forward to detail it further on, (not to the point of adding doors and windows), but I'm on a tight schedule and I really needed more of an experienced opinion to finally settle for something...

Thanks for the cumpliment. Can you believe this is my first project? hehe
Props to everyone on the board who helped me so far :)

[cosmickingpin]

Unless you are doing a aerial fly by animation you can do nicely blending site photos with rendered porject models or screen captures. Here are some I have done recently... Just get a hold of some aerial shots and spend a little time playing with the camera position and you can do anything short of animations. The only way I would model the whole college site is if that is apart of your deliverable scope, or you will be doing animations at some point. Otherwise take your camera out there shoot some pans and keep track of where you were standing, render just your building and blend that with your site photos in some photo editing software worth its weight and you can do anything. Very little work, very big payoff with Revit because you are developing a model, might as well spend your making that sing, forget modeling campus, and use well placed camera site shots or arieal photos you can get a hold of, blended with rendered buildings with matching points oof views.


I have now been working on quite a complex model because my project (four buildings to be built inside a college campus) demand that the surroundings are modeled as well. I have been rising the college model from the provided dwg drawing of the site.

The problem is that oftenly what comes in the dwg isn't quite what's built in reality or cannot be made quite like it should be. A good example of this are stairs, which I've been founding to be rather hard to model correctly in revit (specially balausters).

I want to present 3d drawings and perspectives, along with the usual elevations and sections which, inevitably, will include parts of the campus site. Should I have to model the stairs as well? I've been founding it awkward and time consuming and I'm afraid that it's taking me just too much time to do it...

What would you do in my place?

I'll leave a picture of what I've already modeled so far. About 2/3 of the site.

[knurrebusk]

This is very interesting indeed!
Normally I spend most of my time modeling, but sometime photo matching do the trick.

I´m not a frequent poster on this forum, but seems like Revit´s pace is increasing.
The amount of work I produce is almost to much, need to be personal with clients too!

[cosmickingpin]

I have a small downtown development project I am working on and instead of modeling a lot of detail for the existing area over a square mile area, I am instead collecting elevation shots of each building, then rough mass each building, and using decals, place the appropiate elevation shot to each face of the building. That way I am just modeling boxes and simple forms, give each decal/ elevation image an appropaite bumppiness and in a flash you can produce animations that have a realistic representation (albeit a video game like look) but highly scaleable and easy to create on a large scale. You could do the whole city of Detroit (that is where I live) like that and have a renderable file with photo realistic detail at the largest scales with very little work (albeit a lot of recon and coordination is required on the front end). you could scale this efort to get better results with stud right adjacent to you site, nad the background could be done extememly fast. as I move on this I will post images to show result, but I am looking at late June for that.


This is very interesting indeed!
Normally I spend most of my time modeling, but sometime photo matching do the trick.

I´m not a frequent poster on this forum, but seems like Revit´s pace is increasing.
The amount of work I produce is almost to much, need to be personal with clients too!

[Kirky]

What you are really asking is about time management. In a perfect world with unlimited time you could model every thing. In any modelling software there is always the danger of trying to do too much; a simple deck or stair can end up wasting lots of time, if every detail is attempted. You might put this down to learning and experience but you need to assess that before you start. Strong concepts shine through and cut like a knife they don't need to be over sold by including every detail. I would try to focus on a plan on what you actually require before you start, set out your Revit sheets from general plans to details. Decide what you need to show, at what scale and why? What graphics are required? What is done better in 2D? What needs to be modeled? Who are the people available to this project what are their skills? What is the client’s expectation or requirements?
Once you decided what needs to done then apply/budget an allocated amount of time, then review as you go against your fee budget. This process will then answer your own question.

[SkiSouth]

This is very interesting indeed!
Normally I spend most of my time modeling, but sometime photo matching do the trick.
I´m not a frequent poster on this forum, but seems like Revit´s pace is increasing.
The amount of work I produce is almost to much, need to be personal with clients too!

As pointed out by Kirky, time gets in the way of us all in modeling. If you are trying to do multiple views or walkthroughs with a myriad of background buildings, you can buy Imagemodeler (or something similar) and it will help map images to a shape and give a very good feel to the background buildings. One issue in doing that is how to be sure your project stands out, and is not lost in the photo detail given to the background buildings. Photoshop also has a perspective matching feature in its edit commands, but these would have to be edited frame by frame or on each rendering view.

I hope you'll frequent the AUGI forum more often, now that you've found the Revit site!