Dimension recreate

Hello guys,
I have a very complex building, hard to keep parallel pipes/ducts/etc to the walls/grids, so they are always misaligned by lets say 0.0001degree (and changing after synchronization…) Heavy model, many ppl. This makes impossible to create dimensions, which requires parallel lines… So I came up with a pretty idea: draw perpendicular line to the grid or wall, check intersection points with mep installations, create dummy perpendicular lines at intersections and create dimension. It works, but it doesn’t create new dimension on the second run (recreates old). Tried dynamo player, all hacks I know and cannot solve it by myself :slight_smile:
I hope there is sth I’m missing and please also help me get rid of 0 in between (builtin node doesn’t create zeros).dimension.dyn (70.7 KB)

Please find attached quick video how it works (it’s a mess). It requires bimorph and steam nodes packages and dynamo file in 2.0+

Thanks!

Try setting scope boxes and drawing in views associated to the scope box. This will force things to be parallel/perpendicular to each other.

You can also dimension from the wall to an endpoint of the line rather than the faces or the line itself.

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That is just how Dynamo works. Every time you press run, it reevaluates the script (kind of) but doesn’t save any of the changes from the previous runs. This is so you can make small changes without having to go into Revit and delete anything from the previous run.

In order to push those changes through, you have to close the Dynamo graph and reopen, then run again with the 2nd input. You have to keep repeating opening and closing to save all the runs.

I need help with dynamo, not how to dimension to the endpoints and set scope boxes. Believe me, you are wrong. In a perfect world architectural and structural model have more or less, but the same grids. In my case both models are links. Have fun when one grid from arch model is rotated by 0.0001degree to the structural one and realigning it destroys walls - you won’t mess with it. Then you realise your mep installations are once aligned to the arch grids, once the the structural ones. Everything looks the same, but dimensioning doesn’t work. Don’t wanna waste time for copy-pasting detail lines and then using dimension tool.

I wrote that dynamo player doesn’t work, so reopening dynamo or graph doesn’t work and still changes previous.
I’m looking for sth like activating family instance before placement.

Hi Tomasz,

Nice work !

I added a node to pin the dimension but it has no effect.
The only way I found is to copy and paste the entire graph in a new graph every time.

Trying to help but at the moment I can only read the DYN in text format (on my iPhone). Try clearing the element binding by turning the Revit.Elements.ModelCurve.ByCurve node into a code block, or replacing that node with another instance of that node. Save the .dyn before you run it, and close the graph.

Now open it in Dynamo Player, run the graph, make a change to run it as a second set, and run the graph a second time. Let me know if this clears the issue for you. If not, please provide a simple Revit model that I can use to test on later tonight.

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Thanks, really helpful!
I found an issue on github:

I wrote python script and used another method:
doc.Create.NewModelCurve(crv,sketchPlane) - kinda painful in Dynamo, but it seems it’s working

And about ‘0’ values - just took 1 reference point from line.