Please Note: Our Discussion forums have moved. If you would like to discuss this article or any aspect of Revit, please do so at www.forums.revit.biz We will be more than pleased to help you with ANY Revit query. Welcome to the second in a series of 5 articles on Revit’s Massing Editor and Building Maker. In the first article we looked at how to make basic mass elements from extrusions, using the Mass Editor. If you haven’t read the first article, you can find it here. If you wish to follow the step-by-step instructions using Revit, you will need to work through the first article in order to have the basic massing model that we will use for this article. So what do we do with these mass instances? OK. So we know we can create various mass elements from extrusions, using the Mass Editor. We know we can add those mass instances together to from more complicated geometry. But what can we do with them? How do we get from a simple mass element (albeit a collection of joined mass elements) to something that starts to resemble a building? Well, Revit has a function called the Building Maker, which works in conjunction with the Mass Editor to help you develop your concept massing study into a ‘real’ building (well, as real as a computer-generated building model can be!) Think of it as adding flesh to the bones of a skeleton. The mass elements we have created are the bones and the floors, wall, curtain systems and roofs we add are the flesh. Once we have added the floors, wall, etc; we can either delete the underlying mass elements (if we’re sure we no longer need them) or we can just not display them (ie turn off their visibility, so we just see the building component elements). I would advise keeping the mass elements and just not displaying them. By doing this we can refer back to them at some future time and make adjustments to their properties. Revit will then allow us to easily update the building components, to reflect those changes. If this all sounds complicated, don’t worry! We’re going to go through it step-by-step with an actual, simple example for you to follow. 
There is one crucial step that bridges the gap between a basic mass element and a mass element that has floor elements within it. And that is…. Floor Area Faces. Floor Area Faces are quite simply planes placed at set Levels within the mass instances. The purpose of the Floor Area Faces is to provide reference planes to ‘attach’ the floor elements too. So let’s go ahead and add some Floor Area Faces to our notional office block model. But before we can add the Floor Area Faces to the mass elements, we need to set up some levels in order to tell Revit what height to set the Faces at.  You can see the two default Levels already in place. What we need to do is add some more levels to form the various floors for our office block. I will assume you know how to add basic levels to a Revit model. Add 4 more Levels, each one being 4,000mm above the proceeding one. These will form the datum levels for the Floor Area Faces (Level 6 will form the datum for adding the roof to the main body of the office block). Also add a further Level, 3,000mm above Level 6. This will be named Level 7 and will form the datum level when we come to add the Roof to the circular tower.
With all levels created your South Elevation should now look like this….. 
Right then. We’ve got all our Levels in place, we can get down to business and add some Floor Area Faces. 
Now that you have a mass element selected you will see that the Menu Bar has changed to offer you different options for editing the mass element. 
The two ‘buttons’ on the right hand end of this context-sensitive menu bar are the ones we are interested in: Floor Area Faces and Related Hosts. The latter is currently greyed out and not available. That’s OK because we don’t need it right now, but we will towards the end of this article. So go ahead and select Floor Area Faces. You will immediately be greeted with a Level Select Panel, where you can tick which Levels you wish a Floor Area Face to be generated for. Tick Levels 1 to 5 inclusive. Note: We don’t want a Floor Face on Level 6 as this is the roof of the main block of the office. And we don’t want a Floor Face on Level 7 as this is the roof level of the circular tower.
But these are not Revit Floors as such, they are just Floor Faces. They are a way of defining where we would like actual floor elements to be located (both in height and plan area). Se we need to take the final step and add the actual floor elements. From Floor Face to Floor Element 
Upon selecting Floor by Face, your five Floor Area Faces will turn grey (and be selectable with the cursor) and the menu bar along the top of the screen will give you various floor options. If you want to change the floor type that will be created, choose a different one from the drop down option box on the left- I’m going to leave it set for a Beam and Block Floor. Select each of the five floor faces in turn- noticing that once selected, each one has a thin red line around it. When all five faces are selected go ahead and select Create Floors.
Congratulations! You’ve just added five floor elements to you mass instance.  The important concept to keep in your mind is that:- The floor elements you’ve just created are related to the floor faces that defined them. The Floor Faces are related to both the geometry of the mass instance in which they are bound, and the Levels which determines their height.
Now for the tower…… Repeat the above process for the circular tower. Select the circular tower mass instance Select Floor Area Faces from the context-sensitive menu Pick Levels 1 to 6 inclusive.
Select Floor by Face from the Massing Design Bar menu Select each of the 6 faces on the model, with the cursor (ensuring each one has the thin red line around it to confirm it’s selected) Choose Create Floors from the context-sensitive menu
 Brilliant! Our office building now has something to walk on- Floors! Are you Related to your Host? I said earlier in the article that we were interested in the Related Hosts button. Remember seeing it on the context-sensitive menu? Let’s now have a look at what this function does and how it can help you to easily modify your concept models once you have started adding building elements (like floors) to it. Let’s say that now we’ve created the basic outline of our office block we wish it had been bigger in plan (the Client has found some extra money!) In the 3D View of your model, use the cursor to ‘get hold of’ the blue arrow grip of the right hand side of the rectangular section of the model. Drag the end of the rectangular block to the right to increase the length of the office block. Don’t worry about the exact dimensions. The important thing is to just increase the floor plan area of the rectangular volume.
Your model should look like this….. 
You will notice that the Floor Area Faces have automatically stretched themselves to fit the new size of the mass instance. BUT: the floor elements themselves have not increased in size. No problem: Revit has a feature that will identify any element that is related to the host (in this case the Floor Area Face) that has changed. Yes, you’ve guessed it- it is the Related Hosts button.
In this Article we looked at creating Floor Area Faces. We’ve looked at adding Floor components to those faces. And finally we’ve looked at how we can go back to the original mass instances, adjust their basic shapes and then get Revit to revise the elements we have added, to suit accordingly. In the third part of the series we will look at adding walls to our office block model. Continue to Part 3
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