Unidentifiable Dimension Styles in ALL revit projects

[Anonymous]

I am attempting to clean-up the dimension style types in a Revit 2019 project and I'm finding a number of styles which I am unable to identify through Revit's vanilla interface. After some further investigation, I've found that these unidentifiable style types appear in all projects, even newly created RVTs with no template.

If I select the Dimension styles by their ID (e.g ID # 1312 in a new blank 2019 project), no information appears in the Properties browser. Revit does not even recognize the elements as dimension styles (instead, they are marked "Other"). If I use the Revit Lookup tool on "unidentifiable" elements, they appear to have identical properties to the identifiable style types (not including their unique IDs). However, a possibly relevant DBG_WARN is thrown during this process:

"Zhihua  (Joshua) Zhou DBG_WARN: Ordinate dimension is expected here: line 1969 of Elem\DimensionStyle.cpp. "

They are not removed during a Purge Unused process (or 3). If I attempt to delete the "unidentifiable" types manually, I am given a warning about deleting dependent arrowheads, though the element does appear to be successfully removed.

My questions:

What is the purpose of these elements and why do they appear in new (all?) projects?

Can they safely be deleted from my ongoing projects?

[barthbradley]

Revit doesn't allow deletion of EVERYTHING.  That's the way it has always been.  There has always been "Default" in-built elements that remain.  

[hmunsell]

can you post a file that has these types in it?

[Anonymous]

Sure thing, but it's just an blank unmodified Revit project. As far as I can tell, they all have these elements. 

One such in this file is Element ID 1312

[Anonymous]

Revit does allow deletion of these elements.

I am curious what they are and why they exist in the first place.

[barthbradley]

I'm not clear what you are asking, but there are 24 elements in your file that can be purged. Are you unable to delete them?

[hmunsell]

element 1312 is just a linear dimension why do you want to delete it?  typically there a starter Dim Style for each dimension type.

[Anonymous]

It is true that it is categorized as a linear dimension but it does not appear as a usable dimension style in Revits UI. Note the difference in the properties browser when you select a "real" linear dimension style (e.g. Element ID 1247).

The problem I'm having is that other interfaces that tap into Revit (Dynamo, Revit Lookup etc.) are unable to distinguish these unidentifiable Types from the "real" types. Therefor they get included in any custom purging scripts that I write. Since I don't actually know what they are or what they do, I'm a little hesitant to remove them. Finding out that they exist in new blank projects just added to my confusion and made me think they might have a use after-all.

[Anonymous]

Just to add a little clarity, I've attached a screenshot of the dimension styles that are pulled through Dynamo. The bottom 4 are all–what I would consider–"unrecognizable" through Revit. 

I thought they may be getting paired with the actual default Styles (the first 4 in the list), but 3 of the 4 unrecognizable ones are "Linear" so that doesn't really add up.

In a real project there are many more Dimension Styles, which makes identifying the "unrecognizable" ones more difficult. What I don't know is if they are actually used for anything. If they aren't, I can run my custom purge to delete them along with the unused "real" styles. If the are, I will need to figure out a way to identify and filter them out first.

Hope that clears things up a little, but let me know if there's anything I can expand on.

[barthbradley]

If had to venture a guess, I'd say that they are needed to upgrade certain past versions of Revit.    

[hmunsell]

LOL, Charity is always accepted :-). now that i understand how your finding it, i agree with @barthbradley . or it could be an impeded starting "code" for new Dim Type. 

i'm not as familiar with Dynamo as i should be, can you write an exception in the Dynamo Script to ignore it?

[Anonymous]

Thank you both for the input. I have not been able to filter them out for all projects yet,  but it looks like that's what I'll have to do. 

I'll take it over to the Dynamo forums if I run into further issues.

[ToanDN]

They are for temporary dimensions.

[RDAOU]

Temporary dimensions use Radial/Angular/Linear not Linear/Linear/Diameter...A quick test I just did in Dynamo, resulted in an endless loop because dynamo is unable to create a new Type from those 4 indexes highlighted above even when they are listed under dimension style. => they are not dim styles or a hard coded constraint for something

I will check if I can find anything in Revit's API later tonight see if can find anything