A new dimension in Revit 2009

The Autodesk Revit 2009 platform products have had a number of improvements made to there dimensioning capabilities. For instance you can now dimension to intersections of lines, references and walls.

Linear dimensions can now be created referencing a circle, arc or ellipse.

Dimension text formatting is now the same as formatting annotation text; you can control the width factor, underline, italicize or make the dimension text bold.

A requirement which has been on many users wish lists is the ability to override the value within a dimension with text. In Revit Architecture, Structure and MEP 2009 this is achieved by double clicking the dimension value in a dimension. Once you do this a dialogue box will appear which allows you to replace the numeric value with text.

The smart thing is that this is text only, so you can’t fudge the dimension by replacing it with a numeric value, else Revit kicks back at you informing you that you can only replace the original numeric value with text. This dialogue box also allows you to place a text value above or below the original dimension value, you can also add a prefix or suffix to your original dimension.

The Autodesk Revit platform also introduces two new dimension types, the baseline dimension and the ordinate dimension. A baseline dimension provides a way to automatically stack dimensions in a string; these provide the total value for a single point.

An ordinate dimension allows for a string of dimensions to report the distance from the same start point or origin.

You set up a baseline or ordinate dimension by going into the type properties of a dimension and setting the parameter called “Dimension String Type”.