Multi Family Apartment Building - MODELING TECHNIQUES

[drh64]

I'm interested in knowing the best way to model a 30 units apartment building and not have the model become too large and hard to manage. How have people done it before with success?

Thanks,

[Laszlo Nagy]

I have done 140-apartment buildings before and it was fine. That was a 15000 sqm project (about 150000 sqft) and I did not have much problem with it. That was before 64 bit and multiprocessor support.
So I think a 30 apartment building will be fine.

You might want to consider using hotlinked modules for the apartment units if many of them are repeated in the project.

[Anonymous]

Hotlinks for repeatet apartments (or other repeated parts)

One modelfile, export *.pmk files from model, and last a layoutfile that use .pmk files. In bigger projects I often use BIM-server and update 2-500 pieces of layouts could be a real nightmare if you don't separate the model from layouts and use .pmk files between.

[Conrado Dominguez]

Use nested hotlinks. For example use hot links for bathrooms, hot links for kitchen and hot links for balconies, to name a few. Then use these hot links to model your Living Units. Use your Living Units to populate the building.

If you are careful to separate in different layers, interior elements from exterior, you will achieve faster output. Hide the interior layers and display only the exterior layers or whatever Layer combination works for you.

[Anonymous]

If you have multiple units that are identical make them all modules. You can make a module with all the interior walls. Let the exterior wall be part of the building pln. Also, I have always set up all my units on different stories in the same pln. That way you don't have to waste time opening separate pln's when you want to work on the units. I have done many multi-family projects with as many as 60 units.