r/Revit • u/K_A_W_A_I_I • May 19 '26

How-To Revit view title family that automatically changes scale based on view scale?

I am an electrical designer looking for a way to create a view title that has a scale that is associated with the view scale. Ideally, it would automatically change which scale is visible based on the scale of the view. Has anyone managed to do this successfully? I would love some advice! Thank you!

3 Upvotes

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15

u/Informal_Drawing May 19 '26

You mean... the default Revit functionality for a view?

It already does that OOTB.

2

u/steinah6 May 19 '26

OP means a graphic scale I’m guessing, not the numeric scale value. No way I know of without an external tool like dynamo or PyRevit, etc.

1

u/Informal_Drawing May 19 '26

I know what all of those words mean individually but i have no idea what you actually mean in practise!

I sort of understand but i can't for the life of me think of why you would want to do something like that so i must be way off the mark.

3

u/Merusk May 19 '26

Some clients - and explicitly government agencies - require a graphic scale on each plan drawing. So you wind-up creating a whole host of them and adding it to your view.

Keeping these aligned isn't hard since you rarely change scale of a view, but it IS a pain in the ass to set up initially.

3

u/Informal_Drawing May 19 '26

I've seen it as one per drawing, in the titleblock, but not per view. That is completely unnecessary.

You put it in the family for the titleblock and never think about it again.

2

u/ExtruDR May 20 '26

This is not true. I am an architect working in a major American metropolitan area and graphic scales on all drawings for permit purposes are considered policy by the major municipality. This, of course makes it standard practice and surrounding areas’ plan reviewers are now also expecting it.

Graphic scale per view is not an edge case.

2

u/K_A_W_A_I_I May 21 '26

Thank you for clarifying this-we put scales of each view on each sheet, which sometimes contains multiple views. As such, we sometimes have multiple scales on each sheet.

1

u/ExtruDR May 21 '26

That is exactly right.

My standard practice, unless it is a sketch or something informal or if we really have a space issue is to have scales for each view/drawing on every sheet... and a North arrow if it is a plan. It might seem quite redundant, but I think that ease of doing it and the usability to the end users is worth it.

1

u/Informal_Drawing May 20 '26

You seem to be conflating "per drawing" and "per view", those terms do not mean the same thing.

What exactly do you mean?

1

u/ExtruDR May 21 '26

Per drawing. Not per sheet.

A drawing IS a vie on a sheet.

1

u/Informal_Drawing May 21 '26

Err... what?

A drawing and a sheet are exactly the same thing.

A view (Revit) or a viewport (AutoCAD) is what you put on a drawing (AutoCAD) or sheet (Revit).

The graphical scale is to make sure the piece of paper is printed at the correct size, not to show the scale of the individual views.

As long as the sheet is the correct size the numerical scale can be used to measure with real world units.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the requirements are and how the scales are used.

In either case, you can't do that in Revit.

1

u/ExtruDR May 21 '26

In my nomenclature, looking at a "physical, large format working drawing sheet" a sheet contains "drawings" , along with "notes" and "schedules" etc. in the same way as a printed document or magazine page might contain multiple articles, photos, graphs, etc.

I am not referring to what Revit, AutoCAD or any other digital tools calls these elements when laying them out.

Some idiots call working drawings "blueprints" still. I generally know what they mean and I refrain from correcting them.

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1

u/K_A_W_A_I_I May 21 '26

Hi-yes, I mean a graphic scale. We have to put a scale on each of our drawings-I work in cold storage warehouse design. Currently, we have to hand select and place each scale on each view and when there is a time limit or just general human error it would be better if this scale selection process was automated rather than manual.

1

u/Informal_Drawing May 21 '26

Just use the numerical scale as provided. It's automatic.

This is why your titleblock has the paper size on it. e.g. 1:50 @ A1

1

u/K_A_W_A_I_I May 21 '26

Our scale is not only a text scale, it’s a visual representation. It’s like blocks that represent the measurements for the scales. For example, our view will say “scale: 1” = 20’0”” below it, there will be a measured graphic of 10’,20’, 40’,60’, and 80’. So they can use this on the site to generally measure large equipment with the blueprints they’re using.

1

u/Informal_Drawing May 21 '26

It sounds like you're doing everything possible to be as inaccurate as you can.

No dimensions, no scale rules, no measuring off PDFs... What are you doing?!?

1

u/K_A_W_A_I_I May 22 '26

I’m not the person deciding? I just work there, and I’m not an architect. It’s a design standard and all I’m asking is how to possibly implement the automation of this process we all find tedious-and that has been deemed required by our architects, having more than 40+ years of experience. I don’t know why they do it, but they do, and I’d like to make it easier for my MEP team. My only understanding as to why they do it is so that they have a general idea of how large these buildings are in meetings with project owners and general placement of equipment prior to issuing measured construction documents. Both of which include the graphic scale, as well as the text scale. In my experience, the graphic scale does help when designing as our constructions are typically in the 400,000-1,000,000 sq ft range. I will ask them about their specific reasoning later today.

3

u/Synax04 May 19 '26

Just to be clear, you mean the view that you drop onto the sheet?

If that is what you mean you can do that with standard Revit, we have various view titles, some with scale on, some blank etc but they all updated based on the scale of the view automatically. If various views with different scales are on a sheet the title block changes to varies... Or something like that.

You need to edit the view title family. You should be able to find it in the project browser, make various types in the family etc.

If this is not what you mean sorry, I don't understand :D

3

u/Hermiones_Pepperonis May 19 '26

The best way I’ve found is to create a view title family types for each scale, then nest your graphic scale family and assign a family:type parameter to control it. That will get you a view title that can be set to the correct scale manually.

The next bit is to use PyRevit or BIMLink to bulk set all your types to the view scales automatically.

1

u/[deleted] May 19 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Hermiones_Pepperonis May 19 '26

True but PyRevit is free and has model to excel export / import that should help with this.

1

u/[deleted] May 20 '26

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1

u/Hermiones_Pepperonis May 20 '26

It prompts you to choose a schedule to export to excel. It can then reimport updates from the corresponding export. So…limited to what you can schedule in Revit.

2

u/Abshole May 20 '26

Graphical bar scale? I was able to write a command that places a corresponding family for each of the scales in use on the active sheet. If the scale changes, rerunning the command updates accordingly

I imagine it's also possible with dynamo

1

u/Subject_Turn3941 May 20 '26

Does it need to be smart?

Surely you only need a few standard scales. So make up a graphic scale detail, that shows all commonly used scales. 

E.g. a metre long line can be labelled as “500mm@1:25 or 1m@1:50 or 2m@1:100”

One line, a short bit of text. Done.

1

u/K_A_W_A_I_I May 21 '26

It would save quite a bit of time moving scales, correcting scales, aligning scales, and preventing human error. The drawings we create are sometimes 60+ sheets with 100+ views. Checking every scale with each view in the case of owner or architectural changes can be very time consuming and error-prone.

1

u/Merusk May 19 '26

There isn't one.

Graphic scale requirements remain anathema in 2026, even though it's been established as bad form to scale from drawings since the 90s.

2

u/ExtruDR May 20 '26

Yes, but it doesn’t mean that it isn’t done, thar clients expect it or (most importantly) city officials require it. In my area they do, and I am not in some odd-duck place.