The metal, copper, has a face centered cubic crystal structure. To generate this crystal, a basis of one copper atom is placed on the lattice points of the face centered cubic Bravais lattice.

The insulator, diamond, also has a face centered cubic crystal structure. To generate this crystal, a basis of two carbon atoms is placed on each lattice point of the face centered cubic bravais lattice. The pair of atoms must have the same orientation at each lattice point. If one corner of the unit cell is made the origin, the coordinates of the carbon atoms of the basis placed at the origin are: (0 0 0) and (1/4 1/4 1/4). This crystal structure may also be regarded as two interpenetrating fcc structures with carbon atoms at each lattice point, the two lattices having their origins displaced by (1/4 1/4 1/4). This crystal structure occurs in the semiconductors Silicon and Germanium and is known as the Diamond Cubic structure.