Adjusting the UCS.

[twistun]

I received several drawing files from a engineering company which I insert as XREF's and use as background information for my contours, structures, and above ground utility locations. The problem is, their UCS is pointing southwest. In my working drawing my UCS is pointing northeast, exactly 180 degrees opposite. [i always have my North arrows pointing some northerly direction, never southerly.]

 

All the XREF's work fine except that I have to rotate their text 180 degrees so it will read correctly. That's no biggy.

Here's my question: If I want to draw a circle or create a line (for an alignment) in the XREF and then copy and paste it from the XREF into my working drawing it doesn't land where it's supposed to. It's always off in space somewhere.

 

What do I do so my XREF's are oriented the same direction as my working drawing? Or vice versa. Is that a function of the UCS or can I use the DVIEW command to fix things?

[CyberAngel]

If you create a UCS in your drawing that corresponds to the one in the xrefs, you can copy and paste directly into your drawing. It may take a little trial and error. It helps that the angle is exactly 180 degrees opposite. You can locate their origin in your drawing by drawing something at 0,0,0 in the xref and seeing where it lands in your drawing.

 

Welcome to the forum!

[twistun]

Thanks for responding. My 0,0 origins matched all along. The drawing I received from the survey company was enlarged by 12. That's why nothing was landing where it should have landed in my working drawing when I used the copy and paste commands. Actually, it was where it should have been, but in relation to the linework in my working drawing things appeared farther away than they should have [by 12 times]. So, that's fixed.

 

I still have the problem of one north arrow pointing at about two o'clock (my working drawing) and my xref north arrow pointing at about eight o'clock which requires that I rotate any text that I swap from one place to the other.

 

How do I rotate a UCS so that they match and which linework gets rotated, the xref or the working drawing?

 

I've attached screen shots of both. I labeled my xref and didn't label my working drawing. Screen shots allowed me to show the position of the UCS icon.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

twistun / Randy

[nestly]

If I'm seeing that right, the drawings already have the same UCS, and the view of one of the drawings is rotated 180 degrees.

[CyberAngel]

Okay, let's back up. In a survey, the north arrow should match the positive Y axis, that is, the top of the drawing is north. When you change the UCS to World and type PLAN, you get the original orientation. It looks like, if you do that for both drawings, they will line up.

 

The scale issue may have to do with your INSUNITS setting; if you copy from a drawing in feet and insert in inches, you'll see the same behavior you're getting.

 

If the origin, the rotation, and the scale all match, you can save some trouble and xref the survey straight into your drawing. If you want to incorporate the survey, you can use the BIND command.

[Glen1980]

As Cyberangel says you should always have the Y axis as your north point as it makes coordinate entry easier if you have survey points.

 

As for your question, Twistun, you cannot move the world UCS point. It is fixed, however your drawing isn't and you can move your drawing and rotate it to suit the world UCS, or you can create new UCS points by typing UCS the clicking where you want 0,0 to be then you set the east west axis followed by North South. If you bring the USC II task bar up you'll see it has the UCS command as the first icon, then a similar icon with a rectangle in it, once you have created your new UCS click this icon and it brings up a dialogue box where you can select all of the UCS point in the drawing. Click on unnamed, rename it and then it will always be in the drawing. OK the dialogue box then you can use the fly out box in the UCS taskbar to switch between world and your new UCS. Just make sure you are in the right UCS when swapping info between drawings.

 

We have to usw this as we like our floor plans to be nice and square on the drawing but we have to give the engineers setting out coordinates which we get from the world UCS then have another UCS for one corner of the building. Then our engineers can overlay our plans easily and accurately onto their layouts.

[twistun]

Thanks for everyones input. I think I'm good to go now.