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You are here: Home / Revit / Using Revit Mass Floor

Using Revit Mass Floor

October 11, 2010 by Edwin Prakoso 4 Comments

In this Article...

  • Placing the Mass
  • Creating Reference Levels
  • Creating the Mass Floors
  • Creating Mass Floor Schedule
  • Switching Between Options
  • The Animation

We have created two building masses for design alternatives. We created the masses as Revit mass families which are saved as external files, not as in-placed families. Creating them as external families are good practice if you have design alternatives. We are going to see why. In this tutorial we are going to place it to our project, present the design to our customer with several early data: the building mass floor.

Placing the Mass

Placing the mass is exactly the same with placing Revit components. We use place component tool within our project file.

Creating the Revit Project

Now let us create a new project file. After you create the project, go to massing and site tab, activate show mass.

Show_mass

You can activate it later. But if you don’t activate it, you will not see the mass and get this warning:

mass_visibility_warning

Placing Mass

Now we are ready. Let’s go back to home tab. Click place component to place it.

Place_component

Remember, we haven’t load the masses yet. You can load it now using load family. You should see it now in Revit contextual ribbon tab.

load_family

In load family dialog box, choose all masses you created. I have two masses, if you have more, load them all. Change the placement to place on Work Plane. This will make Revit try to find the level 1 work plane and place the mass using it as host.

Place_on_Work_Plane

Click your mouse to place it.

Creating Reference Levels

Open an elevation view. As you can see, default Revit template only has 2 levels. Our building mass is much higher than 2 levels. I created 200.000mm height building (200m), which about 50 levels height. Well, if the level height is 4m. Select level 2, then activate array tool.

Array

We want to add 48 more levels, 49 include level 2. So change the number to 49, deactivate group and associate, and choose to move it to 2nd object.

array_option

Click first point as reference, then move your pointer above. When the temporary dimension shows 4000, click your mouse again. Now we have 50 levels! The new levels are just reference levels, shown in blue. If you look at the project browser, the floor plans are not created yet. If you want to create the plan views, you can create them later.

Select all levels, right click, then choose maximize 3D extents. The level lines will be extended following the object size.

maximize_3D_extents

Creating the Mass Floors

Now we have the reference levels as necessary. Select the mass, and click mass floor from your contextual ribbon tab.

mass_floors

In opened dialog box, activate all levels. You can do it quickly by clicking the first level, hold [shift], then click the last level. Click the box to activate the check mark.

mass_floors_level_selection

Click OK. Now you will see the conceptual mass divided to 50 levels.

Building_mass_floors

Creating Mass Floor Schedule

The next step from this conceptual mass study is creating the mass floor schedule. Schedule is a view, so go to view tab, and click schedule> schedule/quantities.

schedules

In new schedule dialog box, find mass floor. Click OK.

Mass_floor_schedule

In the next dialog box, choose which field you want to report. The most common fields probably are: level, level area, level perimeter, and level volume. Arrange the schedule as necessary.

Switching Between Options

Remember that we have two alternatives? You can quickly switch between options by selecting the mass and change the type from properties palette.

Switch_between_mass_options

Even we only created the mass floor on first alternative, we will also see the mass floor on the other alternatives. As you can see here, the mass quickly changed and the schedule updated.

Mass_floor_schedule_report

Pretty impressive for first presentation right?

The Animation

If you have problem with the steps described above, you can see the animation below.

Revit Mass Floors and Mass Floors Schedule: Present your data on early stage.

About Edwin Prakoso

I work as a Sr. Consultant in PT Cipta Satria Informatika. I've been using AutoCAD since R14 and Revit since Revit Building 9. I occasionally write for AUGIWorld magazine and I am also active in Autodesk discussion forum. I'm a member of Autodesk Expert Elite, an appreciation for individuals who give contributions to the Autodesk community.
Connect with me on twitter or LinkedIn.

Filed Under: Revit Tagged With: Mass floor

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4 Comments
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Ateeb Tasaddiq
Ateeb Tasaddiq
7 years ago

I created a mesh geometry in conceptual mass but when load into project it cant able to add floors????

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Pedro Aroso
Pedro Aroso
9 years ago

Excellent tutorial!
Thank you very much.

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Qiang
Qiang
12 years ago

Great, clear and very detailed instruction. learn a lot.
thanks, Edwin.

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Joannahiew
Joannahiew
13 years ago

Hi. I am trying to export a rhino model into revit to create the mass floors. But I keep getting the "Mass only contains mesh geometry" which then doesn't allow me to create mass floors. I tried exporting "solid" as .sat and .dwg files but still doesn't work. Please help.

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