Customise Grid & Level

Customise Grid & Level

One place for the lines everything else in a project hangs on: grids, levels and reference planes. Set how they look in each view, make a whole set of views match one you set up by hand, bring grids and levels in from another file, draw a grid system in one go, and manage every level from a single table. You see every change before it is made, and each run is one undo step in Revit.

When to use it

• Grid bubbles sit at a different distance from the building on every plan, and the sheets need them lined up.
• You shortened grids and hid a few on one plan, and the other twenty plans should look the same.
• The structural engineer moved a level or added grids in their model, and yours needs to follow without redrawing anything.
• A new building needs its grid: so many bays each way at a set spacing, or a line through every row of columns already modelled.
• A tower gains twenty floors, or the levels need renaming and renumbering to the office standard, plus the floor plans that go with them.

How to use

1. Open Customise Grid & Level from BimCode's plugin list inside Revit. The bar at the top shows the open project, the view you are in and how much is selected; it follows Revit as you work.
2. Pick a screen on the left. Each one is laid out as numbered steps: read them top to bottom.
3. Look before you apply. Preview lists exactly what would change, element by element and view by view, and touches nothing. Grid Creator draws the grid it will make; the Levels table holds your edits until you apply them.
4. Press Apply (or Create). The whole run is one entry in Revit's Undo list; if you do not like the result, press Undo once.

The screens

• 3D / 2D Extents — switch grid and level ends between 3D and 2D in the views you pick, trim or extend the 2D ends to just outside the crop region (a distance on the printed sheet, so it reads the same at any scale), and show, hide or swap bubbles in the same pass.
• View to View — set one view up by hand, then make other views show their grids, levels and reference planes the same way: hidden or shown, lengths, bubbles, elbows and line colour, weight and pattern.
• File to File — take from a project open in Revit, a linked model or any Revit file you browse to. Copy grids & levels compares that file with yours row by row (new, identical, moved, renamed) and you decide each one. Match view graphics pairs your views with its views of the same name and copies how the datums look.
• Grid Creator — a grid system from rows and columns (equal or uneven bays, turned to the building's angle, with your naming), or a line through every row of structural columns in the model. The drawing beside it is exactly what will be created.
• Levels — every level in one editable table, highest first, with the floor-to-floor height, its plan views and how many elements sit on it. Rename, re-height, add levels above and below in bulk, and create their plan views. Nothing reaches Revit until you press Apply.
• Help — step-by-step guidance and "what can go wrong, and why" for every screen.

Good to know

• Nothing is deleted. There is no Delete for levels on purpose: deleting a level in Revit also deletes what stands on it and its views, so that stays a deliberate step you take by hand.
• Moving a level or grid moves what is attached to it. The Levels screen warns you how many elements a height change will carry with it.
• Pinned grids and levels are not moved unless you tick the option to move them as well. In a shared model, one that another person is editing is skipped and reported.
• A file you browse to opens quietly in the background — detached from its central model if it has one — and closes when the window closes.
• Lengths are in the project's own unit, whatever it is set to.
• Revit lets a plugin add or move an elbow but not remove one; sketched multi-segment grids cannot be copied between files. Both are listed in the preview rather than failing silently.

The full walk-through is in docs/USER-GUIDE.md.