topic Zones for Massing Model and for Space Planning in Documentation

Zones for Massing Model and for Space Planning

Karoly Horvath — Mon, 04 May 2026 16:09:52 GMT

Anyone out there does Stack models for quick feasibility studies?

I am sure there are plenty.

For something like below, the last thing you need, is to draw walls and slabs and roofs etc.
All you need is Volume and Space.

Why? Because at the early stage the model needs to be simple and nimble. Something easy to modify on the fly.

In order to do that, the less elements you have, the better.
Still, you would want to be able to get information out of the model, like:

Total Number of Apartments
Number of 1, 2 or 3 Bed units
Gross Floor Area, Net (at least calculated) Floor Area
Breakdown of areas per Use/Category
etc

Also, sometimes you would want to do some colour-coded 3Ds right?

The Zone tool would be the logical solution to do these tasks, but:

We can't have associative dimensions to Zones
We can't Group Zones

WHY??????

Just because of these fall-backs, I use slabs instead. That is not very intuitive, is it?

Another use case for Zones, where grouping and dimensioning would be great to have is at space planning.
I personally do not design walls to start with, I design spaces.

Walls are just drawn in once the space planning is settled.
Like in the below sketch phase, when things are a bit all over the place, but coming together for space planning.

Again, dimensioning and Grouping zones would be an easy answer, but no, I have to use fills or slabs instead and turn them into zones later...

Yes, I understand that my design methods may be a bit unorthodox, still I find it would benefit many users if Zones were not an afterthought (Annotation), but a Design Tool.

Just imagine this:

If Zones were not necessarily defined by bounding walls, but instead, the Walls were defined by the Zones, how much easier, better and more automatable the design process could be?

In the future I am thinking of a workflow where

we draw the spaces we need to define spaces and connections
set up rules like:
- If Boundaries of Zones that are in the Apartment Zone category align (touch each other) -> add an Apartment Divider Wall Type
- If an Apartment Zone and a Circulation zone share boundaries -> add a Corridor Wall type
- If a Zone boundary has nothing touching it or it touches a Balcony boundary -> add an External Wall Type.
- etc.

Before we get to the above "Dream" stage though, we could just start with making it possible to Group and Dimension zones!
After all - just think about it - what is the difference between elements produced by the Zone Tool and the Slab Tool? Not much, right, so why could zones not be dimensioned and grouped?

Operating system used: Windows 11

Re: Zones for Massing Model and for Space Planning

Laszlo Nagy — Mon, 04 May 2026 16:13:44 GMT

Project Aurora is being developed to do many of the things that you mention here:

https://www.graphisoft.com/en-hu/company/innovation/project-aurora/

On above webpage, you can join a waitlist for Aurora.

Project Aurora Product Roadmap page:

https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Product-Roadmap/Project-Aurora/idi-p/682922

Re: Zones for Massing Model and for Space Planning

Karoly Horvath — Tue, 05 May 2026 13:48:27 GMT

Hi László,

Thanks for the response. I was aware of Project Aurora, but my wish to be able to group and dimension Zones still stands.

Why?

Project Aurora will surely be a costly extra on top of Archicad
It surely will be great, but likely overcomplicated for simple stack models
Is Aurora going to be part of Archicad, using already known tools, or is it a separate tool alltogether. If it is a separate tool, then that is yet again something new we need to learn.

I am quite certain that making associative dimensions possible for Zones and lettin Zones to be Grouped would be a relatively easy thing to script for the next version of Archicad and it would solve the Feasibility stack model needs for most people. If in addition Openings could also work in Zones (Dreaming), that would be a cherry on top.

Re: Zones for Massing Model and for Space Planning

Laszlo Nagy — Tue, 05 May 2026 15:11:27 GMT

@Karoly Horvath wrote:

I am quite certain that making associative dimensions possible for Zones and lettin Zones to be Grouped would be a relatively easy thing to script for the next version of Archicad and it would solve the Feasibility stack model needs for most people. If in addition Openings could also work in Zones (Dreaming), that would be a cherry on top.

Did you make wishes for these? That would be the first step of asking Graphisoft for them.

Re: Zones for Massing Model and for Space Planning

Patrick M — Tue, 05 May 2026 15:45:13 GMT

I was told that project Aurora is going to be available for 1 year...
It does seem like it is designed as a separate platform; but likely will have a plug-in or direct link of some kind.