March 22, 2022

How can you automatically number grids, annotate door swing, sort elements & more in Revit?

If you use Revit every day, you probably face the stress of spending a lot of time on repetitive tasks. Every project has a certain workflow that has to be followed containing unavoidable tasks. Although Revit itself has many features that optimize your work, it doesn’t fill all the gaps. Repetitive manual tasks still consume your time, time that could otherwise be spent creating additional project value.

But there are ways to automate many tasks and accelerate your work.

building model in Revit

BIM projects are not only about modeling. They also contain a lot of information about every element or component, which architects and engineers have to systematize. Keep in mind that the quantity of such elements starts in the hundreds, even thousands – all of which have to be uniquely marked or numbered. And then specific information has to be applied to those elements.

That‘s a lot of work. A lot of repetitive work.

Thankfully, there’s a way to automate it.

Our Sort Mark add-on for Autodesk® Revit® is a configuration-based tool that numbers and marks elements in the parameter section. Things like doors, walls, windows, structural foundations, columns, beams, etc. The tool can be used as a standalone app (it’s one of our originals — from 2008!) or in tandem with our BIM solutions.

Once you get the logic of the tool, you can create tons of different numbering expressions, so even though it’s one of our “smaller” Revit add-ons, it packs a big punch. Most of the features can be generated with just a couple of mouse clicks.

Functionality & features

Here’s a quick look at several of the updated functions that can save you some major time in Revit.

Read on down below in this post for more on each.

Sort Revit elements by model line

Sorting wall elements by Model Line is a useful function Sort Mark brings to the table. The idea is to draw a model line chain, and all the wall elements are sorted by following the line:

drawing of wall panels

QR/Barcode generator

Recently, our team added the QR/Barcode generator. It‘s an easy way to create a unique code that contains all the information you want about a given element in your Revit project.

In the case below, QR codes have been created for prefabricated wall elements:

qr codes on a Revit sheet

Flexibility

Made to solve Revit users‘ problems and help optimize their work, the exceptional functionality of Sort Mark is the flexibility it offers in creating rules for numbering configurations. The configurations are created by choosing parameters in each dialog section.

For example, the “Grouping“ section helps you differentiate groups of Revit elements according to a specific parameter:

wood wall frames in Revit

Coordinates of pilings

Writing the coordinates of circular Revit elements, such as pilings for deep foundations, has never been so easy, as it is with Sort Mark:

pilings in Revit with their coordinates noted

Grid numbering in Revit

And with Sort Mark, you will never need to follow-up on the grid numbering again:

letters in circles

For a deep-dive on Sort Mark add-in for Revit, we invite you to watch our FULL WEBINAR >> How to automatically number & mark Revit elements.

Free Trial

Would you like a free trial of Sort Mark?

You’re more than welcome to take one!

To get started, simply download our TOOLS4BIM Dock for your version of Revit, and select Sort Mark.