Modelling an Existing Street Facade

[Anonymous]

A new project requires us to model an existing street facade where we will be implementing new shopfronts. The buildings above the shopfronts will remain as they are. Being new to Revit I am a little lost as to the best course of action for modelling the existing conditions.

We have a point cloud file to model from, though the quality is quite poor, but does anybody have any advice as to how to approach the modelling of the existing buildings?

Would it be best to just model using the building elements readily available in Revit or should we model the street (above the shopfronts) as a series of in-place masses we can later apply materials and properties to?

Any advice would be much appreciated!

[bin]

It depends on how the existing facade look like. Can you show a screenshot?

[Anonymous]

One side of the street is fairly consistent in style, the other is much more varied. The properties range from ealry Victorian to contemporary style properties.

[loboarch]

If you don't need an "exact" match of the streetscape you could consider generating context with Infraworks.  In this image the building facades are proceedurally generated. The building footprint and heights are more or less correct but the facade appearance is not exactly what is there. Revit models can be imported and placed into this model for you work.

This context model took me literally about 2 minutes to generate.

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately we do need a relatively accurate representation of the existing street but this will definitely be useful for other projects. Thanks!

[loboarch]

Yeah I thought that might be the case. Infraworks does allow some control over a facade but I would be kidding myself if I thought it could faithfully re-create an exact streetscape. 

For quick context models though, it can't really be beat in ease of creating a model.

Good luck with your project.

[Anonymous]

If you need to show materials on the existing facades it may be easier to model them using traditional Revit tools for better control.  A suggestion that I could make is to model those context buildings in a separate model and link them into your project.  A single project with many different buildings modelled can become cumbersome to use.

[Anonymous]

I'll definitely keep that in mind moving forward. Thank you!