01
Add your lot and setbacks
Design tab, nothing selected › Site › Add a lot. Draw or type the lot outline and the front, side and rear setback distances — Design Studio draws the buildable area and marks any wall that reaches into a setback in red.
Design Studio · Included
A Massing Study, Built as Real Walls Inside Your Setbacks
Draw your lot, set its setbacks, then give Quick Mass a number of storeys and a gross-area target. It fits a rectangle or L-shaped footprint inside the buildable area — squared to the street, set on the front setback line — and builds it as real walls on every level, so the 3D view, elevations, exports and cost estimate all read it like a plan you drew by hand.
0 credits, included with every account · 1–4 storeys · 300–24,000 sq ft gross target
How It Works
From a lot line to a massing study in three steps
02
Pick storeys, a gross-area target and a shape
In the AI tab's Generate box: 1–4 storeys, a gross floor-area target from 300 to 24,000 sq ft (3229 to 258,334 m²), and Rectangle or an L footprint. Tick Rooms to lay the same program — bedrooms and baths upstairs, living, garage and a powder room down — across every storey, or leave it as open shells.
03
Quick Mass builds it inside the setbacks
One undoable step rebuilds the design as real perimeter walls on every level, squared to the street edge, set against the front setback line and centred across the buildable width, with a straight stair joining the storeys. Read the total gross against your target, the footprint, lot coverage, FAR and height straight off the Data tab.
Scope
A house-scale feasibility check, not a planning suite
Said plainly, because a massing study is only as useful as knowing what it did and didn't account for.
What's in
- One building on one lot, placed inside the front, side and rear setbacks you set, on flat ground at the lot's grade.
- A rectangle or L footprint, squared to the street edge, with real perimeter walls, windows, an entry and a straight stair on every level.
- Lot coverage, floor area ratio (FAR) and building height, measured from the result the same way the Data tab measures any drawn house.
- An optional room program laid out on every storey, checked against the same opening and room-fit gates a drawn plan passes.
What's out
- Multiple buildings on one site, sloped terrain, and roads or neighbours pulled in from a real address — a planning suite's job, not this one.
- Zoning overlays, density bonuses, variances and discretionary review — your jurisdiction's actual rules, which the Data tab's coverage, FAR and height definitions may not match.
- A certified zoning determination or a permit submission — treat the result as a fast first pass to iterate on, then confirm with your planning department.
Readouts
What the result tells you
House-scale site basics, measured from the model on flat ground at the grade datum. Footprint = the outside faces of the walls of every storey above grade, overlaps counted once; coverage = footprint ÷ lot; FAR = total gross floor area ÷ lot; height = grade to the top of the roof. Zoning codes define these differently — check yours.
Pricing
What it costs
No credits. Design Studio, Quick Mass, the site plan, the schedules, the rough cost estimate, Import and the 3D Workshop are all included with every account — 0 credits, with or without a plan. Credits only come in when you turn the design into something an AI makes, such as a photoreal render. See plans.
FAQ
Massing studies, shapes and readouts, answered
Does a massing study cost credits?+
No. Quick Mass is in the AI tab's Generate box next to the room-program planner — included with every account, 0 credits, as one undoable step that replaces the current design (Undo brings it back).
What shapes can it build?+
A rectangle (a bar along the street), or an L — a bar plus a wing running back. Rectangle squares to any street edge. An L needs the street edge within 2° of the plan's own axes, because its roof is built wing by wing only over walls on-axis; past that it's refused with a message to use Rectangle instead, which fits any lot.
What if my setbacks leave no room to build?+
Quick Mass refuses rather than guessing: "These setbacks leave no buildable area on this lot" if the setbacks consume the whole parcel, or a message naming the shortfall if your storeys and target can't fit the buildable area at that height and shape — try fewer storeys, a smaller target, or the other shape.
Is this a substitute for an actual zoning review?+
No. House-scale site basics, measured from the model on flat ground at the grade datum. Footprint = the outside faces of the walls of every storey above grade, overlaps counted once; coverage = footprint ÷ lot; FAR = total gross floor area ÷ lot; height = grade to the top of the roof. Zoning codes define these differently — check yours. It's a house-scale tool — one building on one lot, flat ground at the lot's grade — not a planning suite: no overlays, bonuses, variances or discretionary review, and no multi-building site massing. Confirm your actual zoning with your local planning department or an architect before you design to it.
Can it lay out rooms, or only an empty shell?+
Both. Tick Rooms and every storey is laid out from the same program the Generate box plans with — living space, a garage and a powder room on the ground floor, bedrooms and baths upstairs along a hall — passed through the same buildability and room-fit checks as a drawn plan. Leave it unticked for open shells to block out massing options fast.
What do coverage, FAR and height actually measure?+
House-scale site basics, measured from the model on flat ground at the grade datum. Footprint = the outside faces of the walls of every storey above grade, overlaps counted once; coverage = footprint ÷ lot; FAR = total gross floor area ÷ lot; height = grade to the top of the roof. Zoning codes define these differently — check yours.
Does the result behave like a house I drew by hand?+
Yes — Quick Mass builds through the same typed command stream the drawing tools use, so the result is real walls, not a placeholder block: the 3D view, elevations, print sheets, DXF/IFC export, room and quantity schedules and the rough cost estimate all read it exactly like a plan you drew with the mouse. Keep editing it, or run it again with different numbers (Undo first).
Keep Going
Related tools and guides
- AI Floor Plan Generator
Design Studio in depth: drawing, AI edits by chat, rooms and schedules.
- Sun Study & Daylight Analysis
Real sun and shadows on the massing you built, with every measurement's own accuracy tier.
- Embodied Carbon Estimator
An A1–A3 embodied carbon estimate from the same model, every factor cited.
- CAD File Import & Export
Bring in an existing DWG or DXF lot survey instead of drawing the outline from scratch.
- For Architects
Where a massing study fits alongside renders, schedules and a client link.
- For Builders
Plan photo to house, a rough cost estimate and sheets.
Add a lot, build a massing study
New accounts get 1,000 credits — 500 for signing up and 500 for verifying your email. No credit card required to start.