Auto Dimension

Auto Dimension

Auto Dimension reads the view you have open in Revit — a plan, a section, an elevation or a 3D view — and lays out a complete, tidy set of dimension strings and tags for it: evenly spaced, never overlapping, and placed the way you would measure it by hand — continuous chains across the plan from wall face to wall face, one string along each facade, and curtain walls measured to their mullion centres. Run it again after the drawing changes and it updates what is already there instead of piling up duplicates.

It dimensions every kind of element — architectural, structural, MEP, site and infrastructure — chosen by discipline, set up by packages that follow a drafting standard, and reads linked models when you want it to. It dimensions by project phase, from concept to shop drawings, with five options at every phase; keeps every string within 1.5 m of what it measures; and says what it leaves out and why. It does many views at once, 3D views included, and with dimension by line you draw a line across what you want measured and get one string through everything it crosses. Check the preview and change what you want before anything is placed: take a string off, join two into one, delete a dimension already in Revit, or draw a box to dimension an area or clear it.

When to use it

• A general arrangement plan that needs its chains through the building, wall face to wall face with the doors and corridors between, a string around each core or wing, and the detail, grid and overall tiers outside the building.
• The same plan at the stage the project is at: the grids and overall sizes at concept, the facade module at schematic design, every facade and the core at design development, everything at shop drawings.
• Sections and elevations: grids, levels, wall heights, sill and head heights, and floor and roof thicknesses.
• Curtain walls: one continuous string along each facade, corner post to corner post, to the mullion centres or their faces, with the overall beyond it and the panels where you want them.
• A building with a linked core or a linked wing, dimensioned as one building.
• A structural framing plan: grid bays, column centres, beams set out from the grids and footings located from them.
• An MEP plan drawn over the architect's linked model: ducts and pipes set out across their runs from the nearest grid or wall, sprinklers, lights and diffusers spaced in rows, equipment located from the grids.
• A site plan or a bridge: overall sizes and set-backs from the grids, the property lines or the alignment lines.
• A set of views — every floor plan of a tower, say — dimensioned in one go, each at its own phase.
• One string exactly where you want it, through walls at an angle too.
• Bringing a drawing up to date after the design has moved on, without redoing what is already there.

How to use

1. Open a view in Revit — a floor, ceiling, structural or area plan, a section, an elevation or a 3D view — then open Auto Dimension from BimCode's plugin list. It reads the open view straight away and draws a preview of every string it would place.
2. Choose the discipline at the top of the Package panel on the left: Architecture, Structure, Mechanical, Electrical, Civil or Infrastructure. It sets the drawing up with that discipline's package for your standard, and keeps the phase and option you chose.
3. Choose the project phase below it: Concept design, Schematic design, Design development or Shop drawings. It decides how much of the drawing is dimensioned. Under the phase are its five options, lightest first; option 3, Standard, is the one recommended. Each phase and each option shows how many strings this view would get. The first time in a project a phase is suggested from the view's scale or its sheet.
4. Check the package below that — what kind of drawing this is and which standard it follows. The discipline chose it for you.
5. Choose what gets dimensioned in the Categories tab beside the drawing, if you want to change it. It lists every category in the model, like Visibility/Graphics, with one tick for plans and one for sections and elevations.
6. Look at the preview. Red will be placed, grey is already there, dashed red will be removed. The Drawing check on the right says how many strings sit within 1.5 m of what they measure and lists anything left out, with the reason and a Bring back button. Hold the pointer on a string to see why it is drawn.
7. Change what you want to. Drag a string further out or closer in, click one and press Delete, pick two and join them into one, or switch to Area and draw a box to add dimensions there or clear it. Dimensions already in Revit — placed earlier or drawn by hand — can be picked and deleted too. Everything you change belongs to that view and is kept for the next time.
8. For a string of your own, choose Line next to Area and drag across what you want measured — walls, doors and windows, grids. The string it will make is shown as you draw. Or press Pick in Revit in the Line bar and click the two points in Revit's own view.
9. Click Place. Everything goes into Revit as one step, named for the view, so one Undo in Revit takes it all back. The report at the bottom says what was placed, moved, kept and removed, and lists anything left for you, each with a button that shows it in the model.
10. To do more views at once, tick them in the Views panel on the right and press Apply to ticked views. Each view gets its own phase and option, and each is one Undo step in Revit.

The Help tab beside the drawing has the full walk-through, with diagrams.

What is on screen

• Package (left) — the discipline, the project phase and its five options, the package and its drafting standard, the categories it switches on (with each MEP service), and the linked models the view shows, each with what it is for. The 1.5 m reach, smart placement and your own rules are here too. Packages are saved, imported and exported here.
• Annotations (left) — whether a run adds dimensions, tags, or both.
• Dimension settings (left) — how each kind of string is drawn: which side of a wall, what walls, openings and mullions are measured to, the grid strings each way, what strings are tied to, the dimension style and units. Your edits in the view — boxes, joins, lines — are listed here, each one a step you can undo. Spacing and the rarer switches sit under More settings.
• Drawing, Categories and Help — tabs in the middle: the live preview with its Dimensions, Area, Line and Tags tools, the category list, and the help.
• Drawing check (right) — how many strings keep within reach, whether figures sit on tags or flats, and what was left out and why.
• Views (right) — the project's views by kind, to tick and dimension together, each row with its progress and result.
• Tag layout and Tag groups (right rail) — where tags go and how their leaders run, and sets of tags you pick on the drawing and arrange together.
• Run report (bottom) — what the last run did.

Every panel can be moved, pinned, hidden or torn off, and the arrangement is remembered.

Phases and their options

Four stages, each drawing more than the one before:

• Concept design — the grids, the core's overall size, and one overall per facade (a facade that repeats is drawn once; no note saying so is written into Revit — add one by hand where the sheet needs it).
• Schematic design — adds the facade module, the core's sides and the corridor widths.
• Design development — every facade, the core round its outside, the corridor and core strings, balustrade overalls and storefronts. The inside of flats is left to the 1:50 flat plans unless the view is an enlarged plan.
• Shop drawings — everything, set out from the grids. Meant for 1:50 views: at 1:100 they are crowded, and the Drawing check says so.

Every phase has five options. Option 3 is the phase itself (Standard, recommended); 1 and 2 draw less, 4 and 5 draw more:

These are the options for drawings of walls; drawings of services, and of a site or a structure, have their own (the Help lists every one, with what each draws). Choose the phase and option for every view or for this view only; each phase keeps the option you chose for it.

Below shop drawings each dimension is said once: a corridor or core string that only repeats what the core's sides or the facades already say is left out (and listed, with Bring back). Curtain wall panel sizes are not dimensioned in plans at any phase — they belong on elevations and curtain wall schedules; tick Panels on the Curtain walls card to add them anyway.

A phase is a preset: it sets the cards the way a package does, and you can still change any of them. It is the design stage, not Revit's Phase parameter — nothing in the model changes. Switching to a lighter phase after placing offers Keep them, so what was placed stays.

The phases follow ISO 19650, RIBA, AIA and DIN 1356-1 in principle. Which strings each phase and option draws, and the 1.5 m limit, are settings chosen for this plugin and your office rule — not numbers from those standards.

The 1.5 m rule and smart placement

The 1.5 m rule. Every string stays within 1.5 m of what it measures (your office rule; change it in the Package panel). At 1:100 that is 15 mm on paper — room for two strings beside each element. Where a stack asks for more than fits, it gives up panels first and the overall last. A string that cannot keep to the rule is split, trimmed or left out and said — never placed further out. Grid and level strings are exempt, and strings you moved yourself are never moved back (they are drawn amber when they sit further out).

Smart placement. A set of drafting rules and checks that run on this computer — not an online service; every decision can be seen and undone. It reads the rooms in the view to tell flats, corridors and the core apart, keeps corridor and core strings out of flats, and moves a string or its figures off room and door tags — a string is never left out for a tag. Figures also keep off each other and off other strings' lines. After you take strings off, Don't draw strings like this turns that into a rule of your own, kept on this computer for the project and in packages you export.

Dimension by line

Draw a line, get a string. Choose Line next to Area at the top left of the drawing, then press and drag — or click twice — across what you want measured. Everything the line crosses that the chosen configuration measures lights up, and the string it will make is drawn as you go, with its figures and how many places it measures ("7 places · walls and grids"). Let go and it is yours: one step of Undo, listed under Your edits in this view with Show and Remove. It is placed with the rest when you press Place, and kept where it is when you run the plugin again.

• Shift keeps the line square or at 45°. Snap pulls its ends onto element ends, faces, wall corners and grid intersections.
• Click where the string goes: a third click places the string exactly there. Otherwise it sits on your line where you started it, and moves at most 2 mm on paper if it would land on another string or a tag.
• Keep drawing (on by default) stays in Line until you press Esc.
• Pick in Revit: click the two points in Revit's own view, with Revit's snaps. Works in plans, sections and elevations.

The string measures across what the line crosses, not along the line: square to the walls however the line is slanted, and aligned with walls that are at an angle to the sheet. A wall's two faces always come as a pair, and a string the plugin would draw anyway that says exactly the same is not drawn twice. A line that crosses nothing to measure stays on the drawing, dashed, and says why.

Configurations say which categories a line measures, by their edges or their centre: Walls and openings, Structure set-out, Finishes and openings, Facade, Services and Everything are built in, and the project starts with its discipline's. Make your own with New, or Edit a built-in one to save a copy. Include linked models counts a linked core's walls and linked grids too.

Many views and 3D views

The Views panel lists the project's plans, ceiling, structural and area plans, sections, elevations and 3D views, grouped by kind, with their scale, level and sheet. Tick some (or a whole kind), choose Dimensions and/or Tags, and press Apply to ticked views. Each view is read, planned with its own phase and option (else the project's) and placed — one Undo step per view, named after it. A view that fails never stops the others, and Cancel stops after the view being worked on.

Revit dimensions and tags a 3D view only when it is locked and not in perspective. With "Lock 3D views so they can carry dimensions and tags" ticked (the default), the plugin locks an unlocked 3D view first — its own Undo step — keeping its orientation. It places the building's overall length, width and height along the model's X, Y and Z, floor to floor heights, and tags. Perspective views, and the default 3D view (which Revit will not lock), are skipped and said.

Packages

A package is a whole way of dimensioning a kind of drawing: which categories, how each is measured and placed, how strings are tied and spaced, the dimension style and the tags. Built in:

• Architectural GA plan — ISO, US (face of stud, openings on centrelines) and DIN (shell dimensions) versions
• Structural framing plan
• MEP coordination plan; Mechanical plan and Electrical plan; and one per service: HVAC, plumbing and drainage, water supply, fire protection, lighting, power, and low current
• Civil site plan, and Infrastructure structures plan
• Every discipline at once

Change anything and Save as… to keep it as your own — it appears in every project, with its discipline, reach, rules, and the phase and options it was saved at. Choosing a package keeps the stage your project is at. Export… writes packages to a file to share with colleagues; Import… adds packages from a file without overwriting any of yours. Files saved by earlier versions still import.

How things are dimensioned

• Grids — both ways, grid to grid and overall, on the sides you choose. For grids in a linked model, every way Revit might accept them is tried; if Revit still refuses, the grid strings stay in the preview, dashed, and Place tries them again.
• Facades — one string per facade line, outside the building: the detail, the grid and the overall. Curtain walls are measured to their mullion centres (or faces), joint to joint and corner post to corner post.
• Corridors and the core — strings along each wall line, wall face to wall face, and the core round its outside with its overall.
• Ducts, pipes, trays, conduits, beams — one string across parallel runs, from the nearest grid or wall (both walls of a corridor).
• Sprinklers, lights, diffusers, sockets — rows: their spacing, tied at the ends, and one string placing the row.
• Equipment on its own (air handlers, pumps, boards, footings) — located from the nearest grid or wall on each axis.
• A site — the site's and the building's overall sizes and the building's set-backs, from the grids or the property lines; a bridge — the spans between piers and abutments and the elements' sizes, from the grids or the alignment lines.
• Drafting that carries geometry — detail items, detail lines, filled and masking regions, repeating details and insulation — only when you tick it in the Categories tab.

Strings keep off the fixtures and runs they do not measure, leave room for their figures, and stay in their own room.

Good to know

• Never creates a dimension that is already on the drawing, whether you placed it by hand or an earlier run did.
• Anything you have moved or edited by hand afterwards is left alone. A string this plugin placed that only needs another lane is moved in Revit, not deleted and drawn again.
• If you undo a run in Revit, pressing Place again puts back what the undo took away.
• Knows which side of every wall is outside, so a recessed facade — the inside corner of an L or a cross-shaped plan — gets its strings just beyond it, never inside the building. Every facade is dimensioned, even when a mirrored one prints the same figures.
• Where things overlap — a corner post over two walls' ends, the mullion where one curtain wall meets the next — they are one point on the string, not a cluster of ticks.
• Deleting a dimension in the preview deletes it in Revit when you press Place; a pinned one, or one in a group, is left and you are told.
• Before placing, it checks that Revit will accept each kind of measurement in the view. Anything it cannot dimension is listed under Left for you rather than placed wrong.
• A pipe belongs to the service of its system, so a water supply drawing dimensions the cold and hot water pipes and leaves the drainage pipes in the same category alone.
• Each linked model is either dimensioned like your own — its walls, doors, curtain walls and columns, with a wall line that is half yours and half the link's as one string — set out from (grids, levels and wall faces only), or left out.
• If the view hides anything beyond its annotation crop, the crop is widened to fit what is placed, in the same undo step.
• Your setup is remembered per project, and so are the views you ticked; your own packages are there in every project.
• The standards named in packages and disciplines are the conventions applied, not a certificate of compliance. Adjust them to your office manual and save the result as your own package.