Instances & Shapes Coming
ComingThis feature is designed but not in DimSum yet. This page describes how it will work.
An instance is the takeoff item (settings, properties, parts, totals); a shape is one drawn piece of it. One instance can hold many shapes, and each shape can override a few settings for itself.
Overview
| Instance | Shape | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | The takeoff item, e.g. "Ext Wall 2x6 – Main Level" | One drawn piece: one polyline run, one polygon, one point |
| Holds | Settings, properties, assembly, parts, totals | Geometry, its page, and optional overrides |
| How many | One per item per page | Many per instance |
| Where you see it | Project Tree (under its page), Estimating tab, Properties panel | On the canvas; selectable individually |
Why it matters: quantities, parts and pricing live on the instance, so ten wall runs on one page give one set of totals. Per-shape overrides still let one run be traced from the centerline or sit at a different height, without splitting the item.
Where to find it
- Canvas: click a shape to select it; the Properties panel shows the instance and highlights the selected shape.
- Project Tree: every instance is listed under its page with its key quantity. Double-click → Tool Settings dialog Coming.
- Estimating tab: all instances on all pages, grouped and totaled (see Estimating tab).
- Right-click an instance → Draw more points (extends its last shape), New section (another shape in the same instance), or New item like this (copies it into a separate one).
- Tool Settings dialog: opens on double-click on the sheet or right-click → Settings…. Opening it on placing a tool with Input properties, and when creating an instance from an instance, is the design; today placing asks in the smaller Place … dialog, in the order the tool's form lays out.
How to use it
Add to an instance — Draw more points and New section
- Select the instance (canvas, tree, Takeoff summary or Estimating tab).
- Draw more points — right-click it, the Properties panel button, or
Ctrl+Enter. The tool re-arms with the last shape's points already in the draft, so your next click is that shape's next point. One click is still one command, so undo stays per point. - New section — right-click it, or the Properties panel button. The next click starts a new shape in the same instance.
Ndoes the same thing mid-run. - Either way, totals update live and no second item appears in the tree.
Which of the two? If the wall carries on from where you stopped, that is Draw more points. If it is a separate stretch of the same wall type, that is New section. The difference is visible in the Properties panel's Shapes count: the first leaves it alone, the second adds one.
One item, several sheets. A run you draw stays on the sheet you drew it on, and belongs to the item you were adding to — one name, one total, across the set.
Two halves made it work, and either alone would have been useless: shape.add takes a page and journals it, and the canvas lists shapes by page rather than asking each item filed under that page. A page that is recorded but never queried changes nothing.
An item still has a home page — the one it was created on — which is where it lives when nothing is drawn yet. That is a filing decision, not a drawing one.
Where it is listed. The Project tree lists the item under every sheet it is drawn on, and each row shows that sheet's share — "the L.F. display shows only for that page", in the words. The rows carry a small linked-item badge, and hovering one shows both numbers. The Properties panel, the Takeoff summary and the Estimating tab show the item once, with its total. Each sheet's runs are measured at that sheet's own scale.
Taking it off one sheet. Right-click the item under a sheet → Delete from this sheet (A-102) removes its runs on that sheet and nothing else; Delete the whole item (all 2 sheets) is still there beside it. Delete on a selected tree row does the first. If the sheet was the item's home, the item moves home to the sheet it was most recently drawn on; if nothing would be left anywhere, the item goes. One Ctrl+Z either way. An item drawn on several sheets cannot be dragged to another sheet in the tree — its runs belong where they were drawn.
Draw more points is the one exception, deliberately: it extends a single existing shape, and a shape lives on exactly one sheet, so it takes you to that shape's sheet and says so.
Clicking a tool in the Tools panel always starts a new instance, N starts a new section of the current one, and to add to an older instance you select it and continue it.
What counts as one shape
How many shapes a run makes is not cosmetic — it is what you can select, edit and delete without redrawing.
| Coming | Coming | |
|---|---|---|
| A 4-point Linear run | one polyline shape | three 2-point segments, same instance |
| A cutout in an area | vertices stored inside the parent area | a shape of its own, negative, with a parent |
Neither changes a quantity and neither moves where properties live — properties stay on the instance, which is why "change one, change all" works.
Selecting segments. Click = one segment, and Delete deletes only it. Shift+click adds or drops one. Ctrl+click selects every segment on the chain between the first one you clicked and this one — across any Linear items that meet end to end; Ctrl+Shift+click keeps to the first item. Segments that do not connect are refused with a message. Double-click selects the whole wall of that item. Several segments delete as one undo.
Leaving a chain has two commands, because they are different jobs: Delete this segment removes it and leaves the gap; Ungroup into a new item moves the selected segments to a new instance with a copy of the properties (journaled shape.reassign, one undo).
Create a new instance from an existing one — New item like this
Which one do you want? Continue this item keeps one item with runs on several pages and one total. New item like this makes a separate item, with its own total, copied from this one. Use Continue for the same wall type running through a building; use New item like this when the second floor needs to be priced apart from the first.
- Select the source instance, e.g. "Ext Wall 2x6" on Page 2 (Main Level).
- Switch to the target page, e.g. Page 3 (Second Level).
- Start drawing, or right-click → New item like this.
- DimSum copies the source instance and opens the Tool Settings dialog pre-filled. Base Elevation is already updated to the new page's level (e.g. 10' → 19').
- Adjust anything (height, assembly slot, report section…), click OK, and draw.
The new instance is independent: editing it never changes the source.
Matchlines: a wall that crosses from sheet A-101 to A-102 simply becomes two instances (one per page) made with this flow. Reports and the Estimating tab combine them by name or tool.
Give some items different values
Need a few outlets at a different mounting height, or one wall at a different spec? Duplicate the instance (right-click → Duplicate) and change the copy's values. DimSum doesn't use per-point property tables.
Override a setting on one shape
- Select a single shape on the canvas.
- In the Properties panel, switch to the Shape section and change an overridable setting (e.g. Placement reference = Centerline, Height = 8').
- The overridden value shows a ◆ marker. The other shapes keep the instance value.
- To undo, click Reset to instance next to the ◆ value.
Edit the whole instance
Double-click the instance on the canvas to open the Tool Settings dialog — on a wall of several spans the first double-click selects the whole wall and the second opens it. Changes apply to every shape that doesn't override that setting. Opening it from the tree or the Estimating tab is designed, not built: a tree row renames on double-click, and the Estimating tab jumps to the item.
Options & settings
Shape-level overrides
| Setting a shape can override | Example |
|---|---|
| Placement reference / justification | One wall run traced by the stud centerline while the instance default is exterior face of studs |
| Flip side | Which side is exterior (Tab while drawing a wall) |
| Base Elevation | A sunken-room slab piece at −8" |
| Height | A lower knee-wall run, or a 12' great-room run in a 9' wall instance. Height defaults to the level's plate height; the override flows into dependent parts (e.g. a stud-length list match — an Advanced Part, ) automatically. |
| Vertex elevations | One sloped run in a set of level runs |
Everything else (assembly, parts, pricing, name, color) is instance-level only.
Tool Settings dialog
What is built: double-click an item on the sheet, or right-click it → Settings… (or Settings… in its Properties panel), and the dialog opens with the item's live quantity and ERROR count above three tabs — Form (the questions it asks when placed), Input (which properties are asked, a job-wide tick) and Advanced (every property with its formula and units; the one place an item's Name has an fx). The tabs below are the longer-term design, Coming:
| Tab | Contents |
|---|---|
| General | Name, description, color, tool, tags; Division, SubDivision, Construction Phase and Trade |
| Dimensions & 3D | Base Elevation, Elevation Offset, cross-section + orientation, Width, Height/Thickness, justification, extrude direction (see 3D settings) |
| Assembly | The assembly stack with slot dropdowns and layer on/off toggles (see Assemblies) |
| Properties | All base and custom properties; formulas editable |
| Parts | The part tree with each Qty (see Parts) |
| Label | The on-plan label template |
Plus a live quantity preview and Save as tool… — both
Examples
Framing: walls on two levels
- Page 2 (Main Level, Elev 10'): instance "Ext Wall 2x6" with 4 runs = 142'-6". One run on the garage side is overridden to Height 8'-1 1/8" (◆).
- Page 3 (Second Level, Elev 19'): select the Page 2 instance → switch to Page 3 → start drawing. The Tool Settings dialog opens with Base Elevation = 19'. Click OK, draw 128'-0" of wall.
- Estimating tab: two rows under "Ext Wall 2x6", one per level. Combine view shows 142.5 + 128 = 270.5 LF project-wide without merging the data.
Concrete: slab with a sunken area
Instance "Slab 4"" on the foundation page: one large polygon at Base 0', plus a second shape for a sunken mudroom with a Base Elevation override of −8". {Area} totals both; 3D shows the step.
Low-voltage: devices on each floor
"Data Drop" point instance on the Main Level page (22 drops). New instance from instance on the Second Level page (14 drops). Reports combine by tool name: 36 drops total.
Tips & shortcuts
Ctrl+Entercontinues the selected instance — the fastest way to add a missed run. Double-clicking it in the tree does the same thing without the keyboard.- Look for ◆ in the Properties panel to spot shapes that don't follow the instance.
- Every shape publishes snap points (ends, corners, faces, centerline, midpoints), so a new shape can be locked exactly onto an existing one. Exact joins are what make the wall corner, T-intersection and end counts right. a shape drawn at a Line Width publishes its whole box — every corner, the mitred corner two spans share, the square end at each end, and the faces as lines that catch anywhere along them — and the canvas names what you caught.
- Use the tree's copy to page(s) context menu to seed the same item on several pages at once.
Rules, limits & edge cases
- v1: one page per instance. Selecting an instance and drawing on a different page never adds shapes to it; it starts the new-instance-from-instance flow.
- Copy to page(s) from the tree context menu creates one new instance per target page with Base Elevation set to each page's level, without opening the dialog for each.
- Deleting the last shape keeps the instance: it stays in the tree and on the Estimating tab at 0 quantity, with its settings, properties, assembly and parts intact, until you delete the instance itself. Erasing a wall to redraw it therefore never costs you the parts you built on it.
- Instances with no shapes on purpose: a Point instance used as a manual count holder ("Job Extras", Count typed = 1) can have zero shapes. It lives on the page it was created on (see "Manual counts" in Takeoff tools).
- Moving a shape to another instance is allowed only within the same page, via right-click → "Move to instance…".
- Only the settings listed in the override table can be overridden per shape.
