No, not THAT equal spacing trick. Well, it is that one, but it’s a tweak on it. It’s not ONLY that one.
Recently, I was having a nice chill Q&A session on Revit families and we, of course, starting talking about things other than families. A user had an issue where she wanted her windows equally spaced. Yeah, we all know the EQ trick on the dimensions. You dimension a bunch of items, click the EQ toggle and Revit magically does math and spaces them all the same distance.
It’s Magic!!!
But she didn’t actually want that. She wanted the space BETWEEN the windows to be equal. And no math.
Luckily, we came up with a solution. We had to start with a reference plane the width of the windows past the end of the wall. And then, instead of dimensioning to the center of the windows, we dimensioned to the edge, and included the reference plane. The plane was kind of like a phantom window, so when we hit EQ, it all lined up!
Booyah!
Not the traditional way, but way easier than doing a bunch of math!
Every so often it’s important to pull out the big guns. I have always said that any kind of graphics or documenting standards are written in mud. Almost stone, but changeable when necessary.
There are some things that we do, and I bet there are some things that you do, that should NOT be done differently. Default materials should not be changed, default annotation should not be messed with, most anything in the Object Styles in a project shouldn’t be touched. This is just bad for other users on a project and can get annoying and waste time. There are some things that just shouldn’t be messed with for other reasons; dimensions come to mind here.
There are ways to override or fudge your dimensions in Revit, and I’ll outline the two most common here. NOT so you do it, simply so you know what to look for. There should be NO REASON to override dimensions, and I will arm wrestle anyone who disagrees. I may lose the arm wrestle match, but I am right. If you place a dimension string and it says 5′ 2 1/32″, and it’s supposed to be 5′ 2″, DON’T change the dimension… FIX THE MODEL. Always always always fix the model. Always. Got it? Great.
The first way to fudge your dimension is to override the accuracy on it. By default, it’s going to take your project settings, but you can get into a dimension type and change that accuracy. I’ve seen several times when someone has a 1/32″ (that’s our default project accuracy) show up in a dimension string, they don’t bother fixing it, they override they change the ROUNDING under UNITS FORMAT to something lower.
CHEATERS!!! What happens? The rounding gets confusing, sometimes rounding up when it should go down. And then an overall dimension string won’t add up. And you will look like you don’t know how to simple arithmetic. And I don’t need to tell you what happens when a contractor finds dimension strings to not add up…
The second, far more devious, way of fudging a dimension string is to override the text. For the last few versions of Revit, you could double-click on the dimension and add some text as a prefix or suffix, or even replace the dimension value with a piece of text. Revit is mostly smart and will not allow you to replace the value with another number. See? Revit doesn’t want you to cheat! But there is a way…
Let’s say your dimension value is 8′-6 1/16″. You want it to be 8′-6″. Double-click on the text and you will see the value in there.
Here’s where the CHEATERS come in. If you toggle “Replace With Text”, and type in 8′-6″. (see that little period after the text?), Revit will allow it. You will have a tiny dot on your dimension string, but it’s changed. Congratulations, you have figured out a way to keep your sloppy modelling skills intact and not bother to make anything accurate. Good job!
Not much infuriates me (that’s not true at all – I’m a pretty bitter person… and Crocs… MAN how I hate those shoes…) but there is no excuse for this sloppiness. This is absurd. Model it right, and if it’s not modeled right, fix it.
So, how do you police this kind of thing? First of all, whenever you see it, point it out to everyone on the project team. Don’t outright mock them for cheating, but come close. And bring up that you know another firm that is still dealing with litigation from a job where they cheated on the dimensions. Even if you don’t.
What I like to do (with apologies to Bruce Campbell) is pull out my BIM Stick. I keep it for special occasions.
Seriously, this is my BIM Stick
We have a weekly Revit meeting where we discuss issues and problems. I have only pulled out my BIM Stick once, and it was to discuss this issue. Will it change the cheaters? I hope so. I also hope it stresses to the interns and younger designers how important this is. I know, I’m so sweet passing on my knowledge to future generations of bitter BIM Monkeys.
So, get yourself a BIM Stick and wave it around only for the big topics. Hopefully it will change the minds of some folks, but it will definitely make you feel better.
Sadly, we all do, at least until the rainbows and unicorns of sharing the model comes to pass. I know. I hear all the sales guys tell me the same thing: “Soon no one will be printing anything! You’ll give a CD of the model to the contractor! And donuts will rain down from the sky!” I like to think I’m a pretty forward thinking guy, but we still have a long time until no one wants drawings.
In the meantime, we have to make due with creating a highly accurate model, and slapping dimensions all over it.
Revit does a couple “goofy” things with dimension strings and I thought I’d list a couple here, mainly so I don’t forget (that’s really all this blog is – a list of items that I KNOW I will forget about in a week or so). I put “goofy” in “quotes” because once you understand what Revit wants to do, then it’s not “goofy” “at” “all”.
Revit has some nice features for dimension text. One of these is the ability to add text above, below or as a prefix or suffix to the dimension text itself.
So, you have placed a window in a masonry wall and you want to dimension the opening. The dimension string snaps nicely to the window edges and you place your dimension. Double-clicking on the text brings up the Dimension Text box where you will deflty type in “MO” to the field below the dimension.
Except, you won’t.
What the heck is that?
The “Below” field is already taken by some other dimension! How very rude! What in the world is it?! I won’t keep you in suspense anymore: When you dimension to the edges of a window, the Below text is automatically filled in with the window’s height parameter. You can’t change it, you can either tell your dimension type to show it or not:
What do you do? Put in a piece of text? Of course not. You have to move your witness line. It won’t actually move, but you drag the middle square grip to the wall edge and not the window edge.
They’re the same line, aren’t they? Pretty sneaky, sis.
While you are dragging, move your mouse over the edge. It will highlight the line. Check out your status bar and it will report the window element. Slap your TAB key until the status bar is telling you that you are now selecting the wall. Let go of your mouse. You are now dimensiong the wall and not the window. Congratulations! You can now edit the Below text! And as a note – yes, the Above text is also grayed out, but I have no idea why. When we find the top secret Revit manual, I’ll let everyone know.
Another “fun” dimensioning oddity is a long dimension string that will either disappear, or chunks of it will disappear. This one is actually much easier to understand.
You can dimension to pretty much anything in Revit. Those dimensions are view specific. If, for one reason or another, the element that you are dimensions no longer appears in that view, the portion of the dimension string that was touching it will hide too. Why might an element no longer appear?
The element was hidden
The element’s category was hidden
The view range changed
The element was deleted
The element was NOT in the original view, but in an Underlay (yes, you can absolutely dimension to elements in Underlay, then someone turns them off and your dimensions poof away, too!)
One of our biggest tips for dimensions has been to wait as long as you can during the documentation process to place them. ABSOLUTELY build your model accurately (I shouldn’t even need to write that, but you know someone out there is shocked at it), but wait until the end to place your dimensions. That way your views have had time to settle in, and certainly your model has baked nicely.
Design Tech Field Guide 