Something is up with my project's elevation above sea level

[patricks]

I have a project started by someone else, where the finish floor is supposed to be +236.0' above sea level.

If I look at the Project Base Point, it reports its elevation as 236.0. In section/elevation views, if I change the levels to report based on the Survey point, it also reports the ground floor at 236.0'. So that's all good.

However when I look at the toposurface that's in the file, it's way down below the building. But when I edit that toposurface it also is showing the real world elevations on the spot points! But then the weird thing is that the points that say they are 236' are actually 235.5' below my ground floor level.

And then when my consultants link my file in, Origin-to-Origin (like always), my model comes in 471.5' above their ground floor level. They moved their levels up to match mine. So now when I link their model back in, it's way up in the air above my building!

What the heck is going on here?? Normally the toposurface spot points always report the actual real world elevations, so why is it reporting the true elevations but is way down below the building?

[patricks]

I tried unclipping the Project Base Point, and changing it to 0 elevation. That moved the base point down by itself. I tried it again with it still clipped, and it moved everything in the project down. In both cases, however, the toposurface points are still reading 236' (the points nearest the building, plus other points near that elevation are above or below 236' accordingly).

If I create another toposurface with only 0' points, it shows up 471.5' below my building.

I don't get how this is possible. Nothing that I can find in my project has anything to do with that 471.5' distance. Everything seems to indicate 236'.

[david_peterson]

What's 236 times 2? (Give or take 6")
My guess is that someone modeled at 236 and inserted 236 feet above to match.
Ie someone moved the model vs the project base point.
Just a thought.

[patricks]

What's 236 times 2? (Give or take 6")
My guess is that someone modeled at 236 and inserted 236 feet above to match.
Ie someone moved the model vs the project base point.
Just a thought.

But I have tried all manner of moving the base point, both clipped and unclipped, and the spot points in the toposurface all read the same no matter what. Even when the base point and building are at zero, the toposurface is UNDER the building, with the points still reporting in the +200's!

Moving the toposurface up to the building puts the points in the 400's. Linking in the survey file puts the contour lines up in the 700's.

[patricks]

Okay so it seems it was the Survey Point which was out of whack. I'm not sure what happened to it. I know I brought in the survey early on and Acquired Coordinates, but then someone else worked on it for awhile, and the building changed location. I believe I moved the project levels down 236', the Survey Point down by 236*2 or 472', which put it 236 below the building, and then put the PBP at +236, or right at the building finished floor. Now the building elevations read correctly, the topo points read correctly, AND the toposurface is at the correct height.

I also had to go through and move all sections and elevations down, and adjust some of the views on the sheets. Luckily we're only at DD level documents so not much annotation in views yet.

Now the consultants are going to whine that their stuff moved.

[MikeJarosz]

I understand how you feel. I am in the exact same situation with a project started by someone else. It's those police stations I've mentioned in other posts and included a screen shot of my building in the mud. Know what? I gave up! We are not issuing a site plan -- civil has the whole package, and the site is nearly flat anyway. I've been trying to fix it using survey and origin points, but the guy I inherited the file from (who quit) had only 5 months of Revit and I doubt he used the points. Most likely he moved the model physically. I haven't had to move any elevations or sections, but the file is a complete mirror of another one of the four, so all the viewports shifted.

According to "New in R2016" is they've added notation to the project mirror command. Too late for me.

[patricks]

Well I can't give up, because we do most civil in-house so I'm the one manipulating the topo surface. And trying to manipulate topo points with elevations relative to the finished floor, and trying to match up to known survey contour elevations on the site is extremely hard mental work.

[david_peterson]

So was the topo created off a 3d "True Elevation" civil map?

[patricks]

Topo created using the Owner's surveyor's CAD file, using Create From Import and selecting the layers the topo lines are on.

We've been doing site and building in the same file recently after discovering the method described in a post on here from jeffh a few years back. It involves unclipping and moving the Project Base Point so that the building FF will read 0 (or 100 or whatever you want) while the toposurface points will report real world elevations.

What we really need is toposurface points that can be toggled between Project and Shared coordinate elevations.

This post, which has been a godsend for us... assuming that the person sets it up the right way to begin with http://forums.augi.com/showthread.ph...=1#post1174457