Customize the 'As Indicated' text for Scale

NOTE: The same workaround can be used to customize various Revit Dialogs.

Issue

When you place Views that don’t have the same View Scale on a Sheet, Revit will display a hard-coded text string in the Scale Label of the Titleblock (if applicable): (“As indicated” for English, “Wie angezeigt” for German, etc. - see table). This string is NOT user customizable – you can’t change it to uppercase (“AS INDICATED”) to match the rest of the drawing text; you can’t easily change it to something else (such as “AS NOTED” or ?) to match your company standards or the language in the drawings!

Language	Code/ Folder	OOTB String	# of Char.	Hex
English	en-US	As indicated	12	41 00 73 00 20 00 69 00 6E 00 64 00 69 00 63 00 61 00 74 00 65 00 64 00
German	de-DE	Wie angezeigt	13
Czech	cs-CZ	Jak je ukázáno	14
Spanish	es-ES	Como se indica	14
French	fr-FR	Comme indiqué	13
Italian	it-IT	Come indicato	13
Japanese	ja-JP	図面表記による	7
Korean	ko-KR	나타난 대로	6
Polish	pl-PL	Jak zaznaczono	14
Portuguese	pt-BR	Como indicado	13
Russian	ru-RU	Как указано	11
Chinese (Simplified)	zh-CN	作为说明	4
Chinese (Traditional)	zh-TW	做為指示	4
KAI		AS NOTED	8+4	41 00 53 00 20 00 4E 00 4F 00 54 00 45 00 44 00 20 00 20 00 20 00 20 00
JP: 56F3 9762 8868 8A18 306B 3088 308B (“By drawing notation”) KR: B098 D0C0 B09C 0020 B300 B85C CN: 4F5C 4E3A 8BF4 660E (China/Singapore) TW: 505A 70BA 6307 793A (Taiwan/Hong Kong) https://r12a.github.io/apps/conversion/

WISH

Custom text in Scale parameter - This value should be stored in the project (to handle situations where one company is producing drawings in multiple languages). Making it a Revit.ini setting would not give sufficient control (it would be better than the current situation, but you’d need to restart to switch settings). Some have also asked for it to be a setting of the Label (so you’d be able to have different settings within the same project, or even the same border), but that’s probably more control than necessary (and would be more difficult to implement than just adding a setting to a project dialog).

Workaround

The hard-coded text string is stored in a resource file installed with Revit. As long as the text string that you want to use isn’t longer than the OOTB string (12 characters for English, 13 for German, etc.), you can use a hex editor to change the text. Use spaces at the end of your string (if it’s shorter) and Revit will ignore them (even if the Label is right-justified, the extra spaces at the end appear to have no impact).

Shortcomings

• You need to have administrator privileges (and restart Revit) to change the value.
• You need to redo the change for every Revit update.
• You may also need to undo the change before updating Revit.

Instructions

• Find the desired resource file to be edited – search for the string or use the following table:

Version	Resource File Example Locations
2013	C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Revit Structure 2013\Program\EssentialsResENU.dll
2014	C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Revit 2014\EssentialsResENU.dll
2015+	C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Revit 2017\en-US\EssentialsRes.dll

The bold text above will vary based on the version, flavor, and language of Revit installed.

• Make a backup of the OOTB file (and note which version it was pulled from – FCS, UR1, etc.). Example partial folder structure (for original OOTB backups and customized files):

..\EssentialsRes\
	2017\
		AS NOTED-.2.1\
			EssentialsRes.dll
		original-SP2\
			EssentialsRes.dll
		original-.2.1\
			EssentialsRes.dll
	2018\
		AS NOTED-.1\
			EssentialsRes.dll
		original-FCS\
			EssentialsRes.dll
		original-.1\
			EssentialsRes.dll

TIP: For convenience, you may want to create a shortcut to the applicable folder (from step 1) in the folder for each version. This will be helpful when updating Revit.

• Use a hex editor (such as Beyond Compare) to find and replace the string in the file (examples follow). Use trailing spaces for text that’s shorter than the original (new text CANNOT be longer). NOTE: You may need to edit a copy of the file, or run the editor as an administrator, depending on how your workstation’s permissions are setup.

1. Open Beyond Compare 3 or 4
2. Start a new “Text Compare”156
3. Open the resource file in the left pane (“EssentialsRes.dll”, etc.)
4. Change the encoding setting from “Don’t Override” (ANSI) to “Unicode”157
5. Search for the OOTB “As indicated” text string.
6. Replace it with your custom text. WARNING: Be very careful to keep the length the same (add spaces at the end). TIP: Select and replace one letter at a time and double-check the letter count after you’re finished.

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