Week 11 - Individual Role Jack

My main responsibility  for this project was to undertake the lighting model. Having never used MEP software before, it proved to be an interesting learning experience and wasn’t without it’s issues,

I was in charge of all the lighting design and implementation within the project. This included lighting layout design, researching real world products and finding their BIM families, and detailing the wiring layout with the rooms.

As a secondary role, I looked after the models master file and reviewed it weekly to ensure that everyone’s files were linked correctly and no major clashes were present. There were a few cases were either some walls were missing or structure was clashing with interior walls etc so it was easier for me to make these corrections on a weekly basis instead of waiting till the end to correct everything and risk missing a few details.

As part of the presentation process, I also set-up the renders and visualisations for the project. These renders, which we will show in more detail later, really showcase our work and help portray our response to the brief a lot better than just plans and sections.

With our project, we found that, although it would have been perfect to all simultaneously works on our respective areas, it was just not realistic considering that some models relied on the completion of other models so they could start.

For the lighting model, it relied primarily on the architecture models as I needed all the rooms modelled and allocated before I could start figuring out what lighting is needed. My aim was to provided sufficient lighting for all workspaces and living quarters, several feature lighting installations in the main public areas, and specialised gallery down lighting. The gallery part involved working closely with the interior modeller (Jake) so that all the specific artwork illumination worked with the exhibition walls.

The company I decided to use was Cooper industries as I liked their style and thought it would work well with our design, and all of their products had a Revit family available for downloaded with included all relevant specs. Using these instead of just the generic families within Revit allows the model to start to fully utilise its BIM capabilities.

We had a fair share of issues with the project. Nothing heartbreaking but still an inconvenience nevertheless.

The first thing that affected me was missing ceilings in the architectural model. A minor oversight in the initial architectural meant that there weren't any ceilings for me to start placing lights on. This caused a set-back in our time frame of work as I had to go back into the Architect model and draw in all the ceilings for the building.

Ceilings continued to be an annoyance for me as once I finished drawing them, the ceilings in the linked model weren't being picked up in the MEP software suite. I had to resort to placing them on the ceilings underside face in 3d views, using a combination of section boxes and isolation tools. This slowed down by process quite a lot as each new style of light had to be re-placed in 3d then moved in plan.

As far as group issues go, one thing that caught us up was inconsistent file locations/versions. At some stages someone would take a copy of a file home to work on, and not load the revised edition back up so others would be working with an old/different file. We decided that to maintain consistency, we would only use USB and DropBox for backup purposes and everything else would remain on the StudentShare drive.