01Built into Revit: Entire Walls

The tool most people never find. It sits inside the ordinary Aligned dimension:

  1. Annotate → Aligned (or type DI).
  2. On the Options Bar, set Prefer to wall faces or core faces, and Pick to Entire Walls.
  3. Click Options and choose what the string picks up: Openings (centres or widths), Intersecting Walls, Intersecting Grids.
  4. Click the wall, then click where the string should sit.
Good for

A single wall with windows. Fast, and nothing to install.

Not for

Rooms, a whole floor or a facade with several strings. Every wall is its own click, and strings that overlap or repeat are yours to clean up.

02Dynamo scripts

Dynamo comes with Revit and can place dimensions from a script: grids to grids, walls to grids, room by room. Community packages add ready-made nodes for it.

Good for

An office with someone who writes and maintains scripts, and one repeated job such as dimensioning a grid.

Not for

Everyday use by the whole team. Scripts need upkeep between Revit versions, and every rule — which wall face, which openings, what not to repeat — is yours to build.

03Add-ins

Add-ins from the Autodesk App Store and from independent developers each solve a narrower job: grids and columns, curtain wall panels, framing and precast, or dimensioning along a line you draw. Most are paid, with a trial. Check which Revit versions each one supports before you buy.

04DATUM Auto Dimensions

DATUM Auto Dimensions is part of the DATUM Revit plugin, now in beta. It was written by an architect, for the way plans are dimensioned for a permit:

Interior: every room in the view, both directions, nothing measured twice.
  • Interior. Every room in the view, both ways: a chain beside the wall with breaks, openings and wall thicknesses, and the room’s longest size behind it. Select rooms first to do only those.
  • Exterior. Up to four strings per side, outermost first: overall size, grid axes, breaks, breaks with openings. A string that would only repeat another is left out.
  • Nothing twice. A wall between two rooms has its thickness measured once; a door between two rooms is dimensioned once.
  • Walls, never furniture. Doors and windows are measured to the family’s own reference planes. Kitchens, wardrobes and basins are never used.
Exterior: overall size, grid axes, breaks, and breaks with openings.

It is a beta: look over the strings before you print, as you would a colleague’s drawing.

Which one to use

You need to dimensionUse
One wall with its windowsRevit’s Aligned dimension with Entire Walls
Grids or columns onlyA Dynamo script or a small grid add-in
Curtain wall panels, framing, precastA specialised add-in for that system
Every room and the outside of the buildingDATUM Auto Dimensions

Six rules for dimensions that read

Whatever places the dimensions, these are the rules we check a plan against:

  1. Outside, go from the overall size inwards: overall, axes, breaks, openings.
  2. Inside, put the chain closest to the wall and the overall room size behind it.
  3. Measure each wall thickness once. A value in two strings makes the reader check which one is right.
  4. Dimension to walls, openings and grids — never to furniture.
  5. Move room tags out of the way of the strings, not the other way round.
  6. When a rule and a readable drawing disagree, the drawing wins.

“We are after drawings that read. Every rule serves that, and none of them beats it.”

arch. Ivo Ivanov, who wrote DATUM Auto Dimensions
DATUMDATUM Auto DimensionsInterior and Exterior, inside the DATUM Revit ribbon. Revit 2022–2027.See it on the plugins page →

Questions

Can Revit dimension walls automatically?

Partly. Annotate → Aligned with Pick: Entire Walls dimensions a whole wall, with its openings and the walls that meet it, in one click. It works one wall at a time; it does not dimension rooms or a whole building.

Do automatic dimensions update when the model changes?

Yes, as long as they are real Revit dimensions placed on walls, openings and grids. Revit dimensions follow their references, whichever tool placed them. A wall that is deleted takes its dimension with it.

Should dimensions go to furniture?

No. Dimension to walls, openings and grids. Furniture moves, and a chain that measures a wardrobe will be wrong the day the wardrobe changes.

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