Insert using Auto-Center to Center

Whenever we insert a linked file we find that Revit is wired or biased to using Auto-Center to Center. It doesn't matter if we've just used another placement option Revit faithfully returns to its favorite.

The reason for this preference or bias stems from the reality that DWG files are a perfect storm of chaos that we cannot reliably expect that the elements in the file are located near the origin of the file. Floating Point math calculations rely on constraining the size of the world we work in to a practical scope so that calculations can be "accurate" enough to roughly 12 decimal places. Revit uses double precision which technically extends to 16 decimal places but it only displays 12.

When elements in the imported/linked file are very far from the file's origin then Revit's ability (of all CAD software by the way) to accurately display and describe information begins to suffer. The Revit development team is a bit more fussy about this than how other software confronts us with this concern. One visual clue that this is affecting your project is snap icons fail to appear directly on the element it is related to.

Using Auto-Center to Center is safer from the developer's mindset, protecting us from BadCAD and or ourselves.

Now we've been bringing this up for years, asking for Revit to remember what we've used before and/or letting us set which option we prefer. The good news, from my perspective, a recent conversation with someone at Autodesk has made me optimistic that we will get our way sooner than later.