Massing Studies

Explore design ideas by using shapes to conceptualize a building model.

When the conceptual design is complete, you can add building elements directly to these shapes.

Topics in this section

About Massing Studies
You can use massing studies to perform a variety of tasks.
About Masses and Mass Families
You can create masses within a project (in-place masses) or outside a project (loadable mass families).
About Mass Instances in Design Options, Phases, and Worksets
You can assign mass instances to any workset, range of phases, and design options.
About Overlapping Mass Faces
In the project environment, any joined and overlapping mass faces split into 2 faces: interior and exterior. This behavior allows you to create interior or exterior hosts by face.
About Printing Mass Elements
To print mass elements, be sure that mass category visibility is turned on.
Massing Studies Terminology
Before using the software to perform massing studies, learn these terms.
Create an In-Place Mass
Create a mass that is specific to the context of the current project. This mass cannot be reused in other projects.
Create a Mass Family
When you create a mass family in the Family Editor, you can then load the family into a project, and place instances of the mass family in the project.
Place a Mass Instance in a Project
After creating a mass family in the Family Editor, load the family into a project, and place one or more instances of the mass family in the project.
Join Mass Instances in a Project
You can include multiple mass instances in a project. To eliminate overlap, use the Join Geometry tool to join a mass instance to other mass instances.
Control Visibility of Mass Instances
You can control whether a view displays masses using view settings or settings in the Visibility/Graphics dialog, and whether the view shows mass floors, surfaces, and zones.
Conceptual Design Environment
During the conceptual design phase, create masses to explore ideas and perform early analyses. As the design matures, manipulate these forms to use as the basis for more detailed architecture.
Conceptual Design with FormIt
Explore design ideas by using FormIt tools to conceptualize a building model.
Analyzing a Conceptual Design
During the early planning stages of a building project, you can analyze the conceptual design in several ways and for various purposes.
Creating Building Elements from Mass Instances
You can create building elements from the faces of mass instances, generic models, imported solids, and polymeshes.
Importing Massing Studies from Other Applications
You can use 3D design software to create large-scale massing studies, and then use Revit to associate host elements (walls, roofs, and so on) to the mass faces.
Mass Instance Properties
Modify instance properties to generate mass floors, or to see the gross volume, surface area, and floor area of the selected mass.

Parent topic: Architectural Design

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Massing Studies

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