The Survey Coordinate Tool of Archicad is a brilliant tool to use once you know its quirks - do you know them all?
Real buildings require proper placement on the site, so the best way to achieve this is by using a system of coordinates. The coordinates are like a common language for all the parties involved in the project, from architects and designers, to civil engineers and landscapers, enabling a CAD drawing to be precisely coordinated throughout, regardless of its scale or the software used.
“Having come across this issue several times, I came to adopt a handy (not ideal though) workaround.”
The Issue
Although ArchiCAD enables its users to work with real-world coordinates, this is not always straightforward. This is because ArchiCAD (AC23 in my case & previous versions) can be quite moody when placing a building in real-world coordinates. Except for the very exceptional cases, the drawing would be placed far, far away from the 0 origin and ArchiCAD just cannot cope with it (yet). Even though a new User Origin can be set to change the default 0.0 set origin, in the long term – i.e. when the 2D drawing develops into fully 'grown’ 3D model, you can experience display issues such as distortion and flickering, which could cause panic at first and continuous nuisance afterwards.
The Solution - The Survey Coordinate Tool
Aware of this, ArchiCAD created the brilliant Survey Coordinate Tool, which tricks the software into thinking that the default set user origin is actually the real-world coordinate. This works wonders, as you can flawlessly work close to the 0.0 origin and still give your project the well-deserved coordinates.
When it comes to exporting the information, ArchiCAD supports the export of the survey point into an #IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) model. However, for the many occasions you need to export a 2D .dwg drawing from your ArchiCAD project, the situation changes again. The 2D export doesn’t support the survey point, hence the .dwg drawings would not carry the real-world coordinates within.
Having come across this issue several times, I came to adopt a handy (not ideal though) #workaround. The drawing that needs exporting as a 2D in real coordinates would require the whole model to be copied into a new ArchiCAD project and located in its actual world location. Hence, this secondary project would only serve to exporting the drawing with proper coordinates.
To avoid #human #error, a better approach is to #hotlink the project into the exclusively-for-exporting host. This way, the drawing can easily stay up-to-date should the main model be amended.
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