Are you ready to use the Survey Coordinate Tool?
As I said in my previous post, the Survey Coordinate Tool of ArchiCAD is great, but as any great tool, this requires some fine tuning to unlock its full potential. Although Graphisoft provides detailed instructions on how to use the Survey Coordinate Tool, I wasn’t able to find much information on the preparation of the 2D survey file one wishes to integrate into ArchiCAD.
“ ...this might not be the way, however, this is my step-by-step workaround, developed from repeatedly using the tool in my everyday projects.”
The practice I work for receives most of the topography information in 2D .dwg format ie topographical site plans, openable in AutoCAD. The paragraphs below describe the steps I always follow to prepare the file before integrating it into ArchiCAD. As always, this might not be the way, however, this is my step-by-step workaround, developed from repeatedly using the tool in my everyday projects.
The coordinates of the site plan come as Eastings and Northings, in meters, with 3 decimals. The first thing to do is to enable the maximum numbers of decimals in AutoCAD – changing the standard precision to 0.00000000.
Choose 2 survey stations you wish to use for setting out the drawing in ArchiCAD and type the Coordinate ‘DIMORDINATE’ Command for X and Y, for both of them. This will enable you to get an accurate reading from each point, to the 8th decimal. Very accurate.
In AutoCAD, Y is the Easting and X is the Northing. In ArchiCAD, the Easting translates into –X and the Northing into –Y.
It is only after identifying the Easting and the Northing for each of the 2 survey stations you wish to use, the AutoCAD drawings can be inserted into ArchiCAD. Only by preparing the ‘canvas’ beforehand, by gathering the crucial information, the Survey Coordinate Tool can be used to set a given site plan within real world coordinates.
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