Cannot purge unused dimension styles

[rene.sommer]

I had a user ask why some dimension styles cannot be purged even if all the dimensions are deleted from the project.

Most probably the dimension style is used in a family that is loaded in the project.
When you select all dimension instances in the entire project, it will not select those included in the families. But the purge function will 'see' that it is still used in a family and therefore it will not be listed in the purge dialog.
So you will have to find in which family the dimension style is used.
I don't think there is an easy way to do it. I would make a copy of the project and then delete a bunch of families until the dimension style can be purged, then refine the research until to find the family that contains the dimension style.

[brantilla]

Revit doesn't select dimensions in the "Legends". So you won't be able to purge any dimension styles within the Legends.

[Curtis.Ridenour]

when you do a select all in entire project of dimensions it does not select the dimensions in the detail views.

[mpanutsos]

This doesn't make sense to me because if I open a family that's loaded into my project, I see additional dimension styles that are NOT showing up in the Revit template file that the family is loaded into, so I don't think this is the issue, unless you can explain why only certain families would bring their dimension styles into the project?

[mpanutsos]

The way to get rid of these is to use Ideate BIMLink's Project_Stds-Dimension report, export to excel - will give you the unique ID of each dimension style you want to eliminate. Then just search by ID under the Manage tab, when it pulls the dimension style up, hit delete, and boom - gone! 🙂

[Arthur..G]

We are using Ideate Explorer to "hunt" these rogue dimension style, as it can list all the instance being used. Its a very useful paid add-in for BIM Managers.

So far only text style that is a bit difficult, as when you use it on a schedule, it wont be listed as an instance.