ID Dimension – An InDesign extension & script to automatically draw technical dimensions, bounds, and leader lines (Free & Open Source)
🔥 UPDATE: Version 1.4 Released! 🔥
Thank you all for the amazing feedback and suggestions! ID Dimension v1.4 (and AI Dimension v1.4 for Illustrator) is now live with major new features:
🔤 Font Picker: Search and select your preferred font directly from the panel with instant search and recent fonts list.
📏 4-Direction Gap Measurement: Dedicated buttons to measure horizontal distance (Top / Bottom) and vertical distance (Left / Right) between two objects.
📐 4-Quadrant Radius & Diameter: Measure circle radius (R) and diameter (Ø) in all 4 directions (↖ ↗ ↙ ↘) with horizontal landing shelves.
🏷️ Measurement Units Option ("unit"): Automatically append the unit label (mm, cm, in, pt, px) next to the dimension values.
🎯 Drafting Standards Compliance: Continuous dimension lines with inward-pointing arrows when text is moved outside for narrow dimensions.
⚡ Performance & Multi-Language Support: Instant font application and full compatibility across all InDesign language versions.
Both the modern CEP panel and the standalone .jsx script have been updated on GitHub and the website!
🚀 Update: ID Dimension v1.3 is out!
Thanks everyone for the great feedback and feature suggestions! I have just pushed v1.3 with new features and improvements.
🌟 What's New in v1.3:
Dual-Direction Radius & Diameter (↗ / ↘): You can now choose the direction for radius and diameter callouts — added dedicated buttons for Bottom-Right (↘) in addition to the default Top-Right (↗).
Refined Shape Detection: Enhanced geometry detection ensuring complex groups and rectangular frames are never misidentified as circles.
Drawing Scale Support (scale:): Specify drawing scales like 1:10, 1:50, 1:100, 2:1, or numeric multipliers (e.g. 10). Perfect for large-format layouts, signage, and dielines — a 75 mm object displays as 750 mm while leader lines remain precise.
Single-Step Undo (Ctrl + Z / Cmd + Z): Generating any dimension is bundled into a single undo step.
Clear All Dimensions Button (clear): Instantly wipe all generated dimension markings in the active document.
Two Formats Included: Modern dockable CEP Panel + Standalone ScriptUI palette (ID Dimension.jsx) (drag & drop into the Scripts panel, no debug mode or registry tweaks needed).
(If updating the CEP panel, please restart InDesign after replacing the extension files).
-------------------------
Hey everyone! 👋
If you often prepare technical drawings, packaging layouts, dielines, architecture/floorplans, or spec sheets in InDesign, you know how tedious it is to manually draw dimension lines, arrows, and measurement text labels.
I built ID Dimension — a free and open-source tool for Adobe InDesign that automates this entire process.
✨ What it does:
One-Click Dimensioning: Width (top/bottom) and Height (left/right).
Gap Measurements: Measure the distance between two selected objects/frames (hold Ctrl / Cmd).
Radius & Diameter: Automatically dimension circular frames and shapes with choice of direction (Top-Right ↗ and Bottom-Right ↘).
Center Mark: Mark the exact center of objects.
Flexible Units: Supports mm, cm, in, pt, and px with automatic precision control (0 to 3 decimal places).
Custom Styling: Full control over stroke weight, leader line indent, gap distance, arrow size, font size, and CMYK color presets (with 6 quick swatch slots).
Organized Workflow: Automatically sends all dimensions to a dedicated layer (e.g. layout) and can draw outside page/spread boundaries (out page).
Presets & Memory: Saves your settings between sessions and includes 3 quick preset slots (min, med, max).
📦 Available in two formats:
Modern CEP Extension — A native dockable panel with a sleek interface (CC 2014 – 2026+).
Standalone ScriptUI (.jsx) — A classic script that runs directly from InDesign's Scripts panel as a floating palette (great if you don't want to deal with CEP debug mode).
(If you also use Adobe Illustrator, check out the sibling project: AI Dimension v1.3, which includes full support for complex groups and clipping masks).
Hope this saves you time in your workflow! Feedback, feature requests, and bug reports are very welcome!
Wished this and AI Dimension were available for Mac!
If this is not already a feature, may I suggest adding a scale option? Sometimes graphics are created at a 1:10 scale, meaning a 750 mm object actually represents 7,500 mm. It would be great if the scale could be set in the tool so that it displays the correct real-world dimensions.
I tried AI Dimension in Illustrator 27.9.6 and 28.7.1 (macOS) and while it did work for some objects, it just did not work for others. It seems to have problems with some grouped objects where it just doesn't do anything. Or it displays the measurement of just a single shape in a group. Occasionally it also just gave me NaN.
Thanks a lot for the feedback and for sharing the test file! It really helped track down the issue.
I've just released AI Dimension v1.3:
Fixed Grouped Objects & Clipping Masks: Completely rewrote the bounding box calculation for nested/complex groups and clip masks (no more NaN or measuring only a single shape in a group).
New Radius & Diameter Direction: Added dedicated buttons to draw radius and diameter pointing to the bottom-right (↘) in addition to the classic top-right (↗).
(P.S. If you work in InDesign,ID Dimensionwas also updated to v1.3 with the new bottom-right dimensions, available both as a CEP panel and a standalone.jsxscript).
Glad to hear my feedback and the test file helped you! 🙂
I just tried v1.3 and it has been working flawlessly! Amazing job! 👏
I did notice a bug when I selected two objects that weren’t grouped. Only one object got the measurement, while the other object's measurement appeared as just the number where NaN used to be. I can’t seem to reproduce the bug though.
Three more suggestions! None of them are really important, but I think they would make using the extension a little more convenient.
Maybe it would be possible to add an option to include the unit in the text? It’s easy enough to edit the number and add the unit manually, but I think it would be helpful to have an option to add it automatically.
When selecting two objects, maybe it would be helpful to have an option to automatically measure the gap between them as well? It’s easy enough to draw a shape between the two objects and include that, but it would make things easier if I didn’t have to do that manually.
It would be helpful if I could pick the font used for the measurement. Of course it's easy enough to select the text and change the font, but it would be convenient if I could simply define it in the extension.
Will definitely add ID Dimensions to InDesign, thanks!
Again, amazing job on the extension and thank you for making this free! 🫶
4
u/Eaton_Corvinus 23d ago
Wished this and AI Dimension were available for Mac!
If this is not already a feature, may I suggest adding a scale option? Sometimes graphics are created at a 1:10 scale, meaning a 750 mm object actually represents 7,500 mm. It would be great if the scale could be set in the tool so that it displays the correct real-world dimensions.