copy/move mass groups

[jeff.95551]

I'm trying to lay out a multifamily community in 2012, and wanted to use the mass groups to start - I haven't really used mass groups in the past. I make the mass, which can be copied, manipulated, etc. like you would expect from any object. But as soon as I make a group out of multiple mass objects (and only mass objects), it gets locked down to one single location. If I copy it, or drag from the project browser, or do "Create Similar" it puts another one there and locks it exactly where the first one is. I can drag an origin point, which has nothing to do with the location of the mass group, but I can't move the mass group. I tried to find help on that, but it sent me to the autodesk wiki, which wasn't relevant... is there somewhere better I can look to learn how to deal with this? It would be great to have groups in place to refine and update the buildings as they are developed without having to re-build the site plan every time...

Thanks Muchos!

[Devin_82]

In my experience grouping and in place masses don't play nice, or at all really as you have experienced. There are a few ways you can get around the issue, the best being to create the masses you are trying to group as conceptual massing families instead of trying to group them. If you are working with rectangular shaoes primarily you can remoev a lot of headache if you give them some basic parameters. Once you get non rectilinear the complexity level skyrockets as far as trying to put parameters in place in the family. If you need to design in context there are a few tutorials that you should be able to find online about how to copy various types of objects from projects into families, most of which involve some kind of intermediate family like a profile family for example.

That was really wordy... sorry. Anyway, if someone else has some magic button that will make this work, I would also love to hear. So far the work around method has been pretty tedious for me and my users, though it does work.