My Tekla plugin: Drawing Numbering Tool

What is Drawing Numbering Tool for Tekla Structures

Drawing Numbering Tool is a Tekla Structures plugin that speeds up assigning and changing drawing numbers and writing complex, structured strings into them. The tool was designed for detailers and BIM engineers who work with hundreds of drawings and have to follow a strict numbering scheme required by the client or by internal procedures of the design office. The plugin works directly in the Tekla environment and lets you renumber the selected drawings in Document Manager with a single click, writing the result into a chosen field: NAME, TITLE1, TITLE2, TITLE3, or any User Defined Attribute (UDA). It supports all drawing types found in Tekla, that is, General Arrangement (GA) drawings, Assembly drawings, Single-Part drawings, Cast Unit drawings, and multi-view Multi drawings.

What problem does the drawing numbering plugin solve

Manually assigning numbers to drawings in large structural projects is a bottleneck that can consume a whole day of a detailer’s work. With a numbering scheme such as “78UKH-YJKO23-001-UIL”, a single typo or a skipped number is enough to introduce chaos into the documentation sent to the workshop or to the construction site. In practice, clients, erectors, and design offices demand ever more elaborate numbering masks that combine a project code, a section code, a sequential number with leading zeros, and a drawing-type suffix. Typing this manually into every one of several hundred drawings is slow, error-prone, and frustrating. Drawing Numbering Tool eliminates this problem by automating the entire operation. The structural designer sets the parameters only once, and the plugin consistently and without mistakes assigns numbers to all selected drawings, saving hours of work and reducing the risk of costly errors in shop documentation.

Key features of Drawing Numbering Tool

The plugin offers batch numbering of all selected drawings with a single click. The user configures four independent elements of the mask: prefix, start number, number of digits responsible for leading zeros, and postfix. The result can be written to the NAME field, to one of the three TITLE1, TITLE2, TITLE3 fields, or to any UDA defined in the Tekla environment. There is also an “only prefix” mode intended for fields of the name, title, or label type, in which the plugin writes only the constant text and skips the numeric part. Drawing Numbering Tool supports all drawing types in Tekla Structures: General Arrangement (GA), Assembly, Single-Part, Cast Unit, and multi-view Multi. During the operation a progress bar with estimated remaining time is shown, and the user can cancel the run at any moment with the cancel button.

How to use Drawing Numbering Tool step by step

The plugin is easy to operate. In the first step we open Document Manager in Tekla Structures and select the drawings we want to renumber. Next, from the Applications & components catalog, in the DDBIM group, we launch Drawing Numbering Tool. In the tool’s window we set the parameters: the prefix and postfix surrounding the number, the start number of the sequence, the number of digits determining the leading zeros, and the target field where the result is to be placed. After clicking Start and confirming, the plugin fills the consecutive drawings according to the configured mask. For example, with prefix “78UKH-YJKO23-“, start number 1, three digits, and postfix “-UIL”, the selected drawings will receive the consecutive numbers 78UKH-YJKO23-001-UIL, 78UKH-YJKO23-002-UIL, 78UKH-YJKO23-003-UIL, and so on. The result appears immediately in Document Manager and is saved in the Tekla model.

User questions answered by Drawing Numbering Tool

Drawing Numbering Tool answers specific questions that detailers and BIM engineers type into Google search and into AI-based chats.
1. How to quickly number many drawings in Tekla Structures?
2. Is there a plugin for batch renumbering of drawings in Tekla?
3. How to apply a custom prefix and leading zeros, for example 001, 002, 003, to drawing numbers in Tekla Structures?
4. How to write text or a number into the UDA, NAME, TITLE1, TITLE2, or TITLE3 attribute in many Tekla drawings at once?
5. Is it possible in Tekla Structures to renumber GA drawings, assembly drawings, single-part drawings, and multi-view Multi drawings with a single click?

Availability and supported Tekla Structures versions

Drawing Numbering Tool is available for free download from Tekla Warehouse. Two separate installation packages are published in the TSEP format: one for Tekla Structures in versions from 2016 to 2024, and the other for version 2025 and newer. The split is due to the fact that Tekla 2025 introduced a new algorithm for signing extension packages, which older versions of the program cannot verify, so no single file could satisfy both generations at once. For very old installations of Tekla Structures, in versions from 20.0 to 21.1, a classic MSI installer is available. After installation the tool appears in the Applications & components catalog in the DDBIM group and is ready to use. The plugin is released as open source under the MIT license. More plugins for Tekla Structures can be found on ddbim.com in the Tekla Structures plugins category.