massing multi use occupancy and then scheduling them

[sami]

I’m massing a mixed use development and trying to get the schedules for the mass areas for the different uses (i.e. residential, retail, etc..) the masses are also color coded based on the use. This is a description of my method, let me know if someone has a better way of doing it.

I mass each use in a separate mass, I assign that mass a description (retail, residential) in the instance properties under “comments”
I create a Mass Floor schedule, and I add the mass comments in the fields so that it sorts them based on use.

What I initially wanted to do is to schedule based on the material assigned to the mass, this way I am always certain the for example all the yellow masses are residential and all the red are commercial. But I didn’t find a way to do that, so I am using the mass comments field instead.

Any ideas about any drawbacks for this approach, or any other ways of achieving this?

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Without creating a shared parameter and assigning it to the masses the material won't show up.
I would still color code based on use but schedule the mass floors instead of the masses. You can assign the usage to the floor, not the mass, and you'll get the area calcs you need. I think this would also make managing your masses a bit easier. A mass that had the same footprint but contained multiple uses (retail ground floor, commercial on the second and residential on the upper floors) could be one mass but have different mass floor usages assigned.
To make it even clearer I've created multiple placeholder floor types to represent each use and assigned a surface color and cut fill color based on use. This allows you to create quick sections and 'color coded' floor plans without having to create area plans as well as color coded stacking plans in 3D