I have done quite a few things for dimensioning so far, but this is at the moment the most elaborate solution. It covers many different cases and it was developed for the needs of a particular company.
I’m very thankful to Line Systems for giving me that task, I enjoyed it a lot.
My goal in developing this plugin was to minimize the friction of using an additional tool.
Having a single button that does the job, without having to select different options every time. Having a single button that places all the dimensions in all different views was the goal and it was achieved.
There are a few settings of course - the offset for the dimension lines, selecting a dimension type for two types of dimensions - as required by the customer.
Another goal was to not change the workflow of the customer and to follow traditional best practices in Revit modelling.
So this minimalistic look of one button was achieved that way - so we could apply it to the projects that were already existing.
There are some specific preparations inside the doors families - that allow achieving the dimensioning needed, but nothing that falls outside of regular Revit family building practices - using the right reference planes inside families and using parameters that the tool is reading in order to know where it should place a dimension and where - not.
My clients say that tool saves them up to 50% of the time for the shop drawings.
How much time do you think such a tool saves?
Feel free to contact me if you need a custom solution for automating tasks in Revit.
Most other things I’ve done for dimensioning were made for Dynamo.
And they do work and are quite versatile and simpler.
Could this be done in Dynamo?
Absolutely.
Actually, I used Dynamo quite a lot in the beginning. I developed different functions as Python nodes in Dynamo first.
Could it be done in Dynamo without Python?
Highly unlikely. It is too niche, I haven’t seen packages that have the tools needed.
Why a plugin and not a Dynamo node?
Because it’s too niche, too narrow of an application. And also it is easier to use for everyone. Just regular Revit skills needed. As I said one of the main goals was to make it work with a press of a button so it is “customer-friendly”.
Thanks for reading!
Viktor