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272 | ChAPter 8 AdvAnced Modeling And MAssing

After you create a whole-building mass, you can use By Face versions of commands to place
system families such as walls, floors, and roofs. When these elements are placed by face, they
retain a relationship to the mass elements. The associated building elements are not updated
automatically, which means you can freely explore design alternatives to the massing. Once you
are confident of your final design decision, the building elements can be updated to match the
changes in the underlying mass.
Another important thing to know about massing is that masses can be created in either the
project environment or in the Family Editor. Much of the functionality overlaps in each case, so
what’s the difference between the two?
The main difference as to whether you create massing in place or in the Family Editor doesn’t
depend on the kind of shape or surface you want to create. Solid and surface forms can be
created in both the project and Family Editor environments. Rather, it depends on how you want
to create the massing and how you want to change the mass once it’s been created.
Using in-place masses gives you the ability to model in the context of other surroundings
(Figure 8.1). For example, you may be proposing an addition to an existing building or a new
building on an existing campus. You may need to create a complex shape for a feature wall or a
roof form, and you therefore need the context of the rest of your building design.

Figure 8.1
Building massing
in the context
of an existing
neighborhood

Creating a mass in the Family Editor gives you a slightly different user interface (UI)
(Figure 8.2). When you create a Conceptual Mass family, you have the ability to see work
planes and levels in 3D views; however, these references are not in the context of your project
environment. In addition to the lack of context in the Family Editor, to make changes to
massing, you must reload the mass families into your project for face-based elements and
schedules to update.

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