Common Coordinate System - Large Site Model

[Limbatus]

I've been asked to format the Site Model and a Building Model Template for a large project our office is handling. Our project site is 1400' Feet Long, 800' Wide. The site currently has 7 warehouses, and we will be building 12 more over the next 5 years or so. I want to set up a template with a common coordinate system such that future building models can be linked (By Shared Coordinates) without any manual relocation. I have set the PBP for our Site Model based on our ALTA SURVEY's CAD ORIGIN. How should my building model template PBP be located. Our Template currently sets the PBP at 0,0,0 in the center of each sheet. I'm trying to avoid lots of view reformatting in the future. what's the best way to achieve this. thanks AUGI

[Steve_Stafford]

In the site, unclip the Survey Point, move it to a bench mark location in the survey. Use Acquire Coordinates and the Survey Point should report the same coordinates as that benchmark in the survey file. If it doesn't then the coordinate values may be too large for the Acquire Coordinates tool. The Specify Coordinates at Point will let you accomplish the same end goal but you have to start by picking the same benchmark location, make sure you snap to the Survey Point, enter the same benchmark coordinates. That defines the real world coordinates in the Revit site file based on your surveyor's file.

Model each building separately and just make it easy to put them on paper (Project North instead of True North). Link the building(s) into the site file and move, rotate and elevate them to match the intended orientation and location for each. Use Publish Coordinates to "push" the shared coordinates to the building file(s). Once this is done each building file you do this for will understand their correct orientation on site and their relationship to each other based on Shared Coordinates (defined in the site file).

[Limbatus]

Thanks for the explanation. I have been searching for a thread that explains this so concisely.

[Steve_Stafford]

Fwiw, I've been writing about the Shared Coordinate concepts for many years on my blog. I've written a post that offers a summary (http://revitoped.blogspot.com/2012/05/shared-coordinate-post-summary.html) of all the post on the subject. THIS POST (http://revitoped.blogspot.com/2013/06/coordinating-projects-using-shared.html) specifically includes a PDF document that outlines using them from two different perspectives: small and large projects. If you are looking for more background, you might find it helpful too.