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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.

For example, you can perform the following types of analysis:

  • The best mix of uses (such as retail, residential, and office space) for the building
  • Rough cost estimates for the exterior of the building, based on linear dimensions or surface area
  • HVAC (heating-ventilation-air conditioning) requirements for different levels of the building

To perform these types of analysis, you use mass floors to divide a mass based on defined levels. For each mass floor, the software calculates the floor area, exterior surface area, volume, and perimeter. This information is stored in the instance properties for mass floors. You can include these values in schedules and tags.

Topics in this section
  • About Mass Floors
    During conceptual design, use mass floors to divide a mass for analysis. Mass floors provide geometric information about the dimensions of the mass above the slice, up to the next slice or the top of the mass.
  • About Mass Floors at the Top of a Mass
    When you use mass floors to divide a mass, the software creates a visible mass floor at each specified level that intersects the mass, except for any level that coincides with a top face of the mass.
  • About Mass Floors at the Bottom of a Mass
    To analyze a portion of a mass that occurs below the lowest mass floor, create a level and mass floor at the bottom-most boundary of the mass.
  • Create Mass Floors
    After creating a mass for a conceptual design, create a mass floor at each level defined in the project.
  • Select a Mass Floor
    After creating mass floors, you can select each mass floor individually.
  • Tag Mass Floors
    After creating mass floors, you can tag them in 2D views. The tags can include information about the area, exterior surface area, perimeter, volume, and usage for each mass floor.
  • Assign a Usage to a Mass Floor
    After creating mass floors, you can assign usages to them. Then you can perform various types of analysis on the design.
  • Create a Mass Floor Schedule
    After creating mass floors, create a mass floor schedule to assign usages or to analyze the design.
  • Mass Floor Instance Properties
    Change instance properties of a mass floor to assign a usage, modify its appearance, view dimensions, and more.
  • Examples of Conceptual Design Analysis
    Learn from these examples of the different types of analysis that you can perform on conceptual designs.
Parent topic: Massing Studies

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