Tuesday, December 05, 2017

Revit Coordinate Systems Video

A lengthy exchange at Autodesk's User Forums about this subject reminded me that I've meant to create a short video to describe how they relate to each other for quite awhile. This morning I saw our cutting boards drying next to the sink and realized they could serve as metaphorical coordinate system planes (Project and Survey) work in Revit. I am curious if readers find it helpful.



The original post at the forum dealt with a few projects that had been modelled very far from Revit's Internal Origin/Startup Location. I looked at one of the project files and found the Survey Point and Project Base Point had been moved very far away while unclipped. The modelling started there, really far far away. They started to experience some of the negative symptoms that can occur and started looking for solutions...thus the original post. The short answer is they needed to move their model closer to the origin. No other way around it.

4 comments:

Peter in Maryland said...

Thanks, sir. My question: Why did autodesk stop at just two separate coordinate systems? That seems rather exclusionary. Why can't autodesk be more diverse, and give us an infinite number of coordinate systems, that change their identity depending on their moods? This limited binary thinking is offensive to someone, so attorneys need to shift some funds in some direction until those being feel less offended some how.

Steve said...

It was designed to solve specific problems, relating a project to survey data. Exposing the underlying coordinate system was more or less forced onto the software by external relationships to other software.

Most of the reasons I hear for additional coordinate systems (User Coordinate System aka UCS) are shorthand for wanting to reorient a building or view so we can draw more easily, which can be accomplished by rotating a crop boundary or using Callouts. That's the practical purpose for UCS in AutoCAD too.

If you can describe a practical problem to solve that can't already be resolved with existing features you might get their attention at Revit Ideas...?

Shahrokh said...

Hello Mr. Stafford!
Many years ago you did a great AU session on the topic of shared coordinates in Revit which I believe it's still the best.
You had two approaches for small and big projects. The thing is that I can't find them anymore. Both the pdf presentations and sample files for studying.
I appreciate if you could redirect me to the link.
Best
Shahrokh

Steve said...

Shahrokh,

Check out this earlier post about the class at AU, I revised the path to the PDF file.

https://revitoped.blogspot.com/2009/11/autodesk-university-virtual-shared.html