How To: Finding Overridden Dimensions in Revit using Dynamo

I was recently asked during a customer meeting if it was possible to override a dimension in Revit with a different value:

Although possible, I refused to give them the answer and told them to find out through other medium if they definitely wanted to do it. I would never recommend overriding a dimension in any design software as this is a slippery slope that can lead to expensive mistakes being made.

The next question I got asked was: Is it possible to identify any dimension in Revit that has been overridden? Out of the box the answer is no you can’t. However, I decided to see if Dynamo could do so, and it can, well with a little bit of programing...

Let’s start by selecting all the dimensions in the project: -

Next the hard part, create a list of all the dimension that have had a numeric override added to them, this will not pickup dimensions that have been changed to show a text value. In my code I check if the override value is greater than 0, basically checking for a numeric value

I could change my if stamen to be: ”if param != None” This would then check for any dimension that does not have a null value, indicating that an override exists.

Finally, I set an override on the colour to high light it in my project.

Nice and simple, use the Element Override node and add the list output from the python script, setting a colour using the colour by ARGB node. Setting r to 255 gives me Red, but you could set any RGB colour you would like.

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