how to show metric and imperial scale at the same time in revit project

[Anonymous]

Hi I have a imperial revit project, and in my sheet I want to show imperial  and metric scale in my viewport. 

Please see the attachment, any help would be applicated

[Viveka_CD]

Hi @Anonymous

You can Duplicate your dimension style in your properties - click on edit type and change some of the Type Parameters.

Please see screencast HERE that shows how you can change the dimension as per your requirements and how you can show metric and imperial scale at the same time in the same view.

If you find posts have solved your problem, please click on 'Accept as solution' to help others with similar questions. Kudos welcome

Thank you,

[loboarch]

The image showed the scale annotation for a view title, NOT the dimension strings for project dimensions.  What was shown in the image to show this kind of thing in the view port title would need to be done manually.  You can add a parameter to the viewtitle and then display it as a label, but it would need to be coordinated manually and would NOT pull the value from the view port automatically.

[Viveka_CD]

My bad, misled by the issue's title.

[Viveka_CD]

Hi @Anonymous

@loboarch is right, looks like the annotation scale should be set up manually.

Compared to spending time checking each sheet, you could try setting up a custom sheet schedule that shows scale, which allows changing the yes/no value for the annotation family with the required scale text in it.

Regards,

[Anonymous]

Hi, thanks for replying . Could you explain how to do it step by step ? I through Revit can show both metric and imperial scale at the same time.....

[loboarch · Accepted solution]

Technically this is NOT imperial and metric being shown at the same time, it is just 2 different ways to describe the concept of "scale" for a view. 1/8" = 1'-0" is exactly the same thing as 1:96. 1:96 is not metric. It is a metric style annotation but not metric.

So that being said, what you want is you want a view that is scaled to imperial units to display in a metric style. Revit does "know" this and reports it in the properties of the view, but it is not a value that can be written into a viewport label. To get that value into a view title, you need to use shared parameters.  This will then have to be coordinated manually. If you start with a view that is 1/8"=1'-0" (1:96) and someone subsequently changes it to 1/4"=1'-0" (1:48) you will need to manually update the shared parameter to the new value.

Basically here are the steps you need to do:

• Edit the view title family
• Add a shared parameter to the View Title family and load into project
• Add the shared parameter to Views in the project
• Edit parameters of the views to update info to the shared parameter

Here is a screencast showing the process:

[Viveka_CD]

Thanks @loboarch the screencast link is missing, can you pls repost?

[loboarch]

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@Viveka_CD wrote:

Thanks @loboarch the screencast link is missing, can you pls repost?

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Fixed. Sorry about that. I jumped the gun waiting for the screencast to process.

[ToanDN]

Are you OP sure about what you want? Because it makes no sense to me. Aren't metric scales 1:25, 1:50, 1:100, not 1:24, 1:48, 1:96?
Are you talking about dimensions that show both imperial and metric units?

[loboarch]

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@ToanDN wrote:
Are you OP sure about what you want? Because it makes no sense to me. Aren't metric scales 1:25, 1:50, 1:100, not 1:24, 1:48, 1:96?
Are you talking about dimensions that show both imperial and metric units?

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The image posted to the OP shows exactly what I did in my screencast.  I would strongly advise against doing it and am not sure WHY someone would want to do it, but it is what was asked for.

[SteveKStafford]

I can't help but imagine being Nigel in Spinal Tap, "Well, it's one louder isn't it?".

Consider that 1:48 is the mathematical translation to a ratio but changing the view to 1:50 is changing the ratio by 2, "it's two louder isn't it." (or quieter depending on which you're referring to). That's means a view printed while assigned to 1/8"=1'-0" is ever so slightly different than one printed using 1:50.

Different enough to matter, I guess it depends on the reader?

[Anonymous]

I am facing problem that while creating family in metric generic model but I want dimensions in feet and inches please tell me what i do?

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[Anonymous]

This is the best answer. To further help this workflow you could always drive this Metric View Scale through your view template as long as your View Scale is included as part of the view template.

[David_W_Koch]

For future visitors to this thread who have a need to display imperial scales in both "traditional" (1/8" = 1'-0") format and as a scale ratio (1:96), you can semi-automate the filling in of the shared parameter that @loboarch created to hold the ratio text using Dynamo.  Dynamo can access the value of the built-in Scale Value    1: parameter (there are four spaces between "Value" and "1:" in the parameter name; not sure that will be preserved here when I post the response), convert the integer value to a string, add 1: as a prefix and then push that value to the shared parameter.

The graph is fairly simple, but does involve a Python Script node because I could not find an integer to string conversion node.

The Categories and All Elements of Category nodes get all of the Viewports in the active Revit Project.  Feeding the list of Viewports along with the name of the parameter with the scale value (Scale Value    1:) to the Element.GetParameterValueByName node generates a list of those integer values.  The integer value list is passed to the Python Script node, which creates a string for each integer, adding "1:" to the front of the integer value converted to a string.  Finally, the Element.SetParameterByName node takes the list of Viewport elements, the name of the shared parameter set up to hold the scale ratio string and the list of string values and pushes the value into that shared parameter for each Viewport.  The image above shows the parameter name as "Scale_Ratio", because that is what I called the shared parameter in my test file.  You can name the shared parameter as you desire, just enter that name in the String node in lieu of "Scale_Ratio".

Here is the Python Script code:

I spent more time trying to find a node that would convert integers to strings than I did writing that simple script.  The variable lstScales is set to the input 0 value (only input for this script), which is the list of scale integers.  An empty list called result is established, and then a for loop takes each integer in lstScales, creates the scale string from it and appends that scale string to the result list.  Finally, the output of the Python Script node is set to the result list.

Rather than adding another label to the View Title, as @loboarch showed in his screencast, I modified the existing scale label to append the scale ratio value to it.  I started with my office's View Title, which has a prefix of "SCALE: " before the "traditional" imperial scale; that could be deleted if you do not want that.  I added 5 spaces to separate the two scale representations, and, similar to the original poster's image, enclosed the scale ratio string value with parentheses.

The result in a project looks like this:

The Dynamo graph file, done in version 2.0.3, is attached.

Note that you will need to run the script every time another view is added (that is to be placed on a sheet, anyway) and any time you change the scale of a view; the Scale_Ratio parameter value will not update dynamically with changes in scale.  The Dynamo graph just makes it easier to make certain all views have a Scale_Ratio value that corresponds to the current View Scale value at the time the graph is run.