Coordinate Dimension

[Augi Doggie]

A lot of my Civil work is based on surveys that are real world (state plane) coordinates. More and more surveyors are using GPS systems that use coordinates and are moving away from the old station and offset method. I would love a dimension command that would call out the northing and easting or at least X and Y coordinates of an object.
A friend of mine created a lisp routine that works that works for now but it should really be in AutoCAD as regular command.

[thair]

A lot of my Civil work is based on surveys that are real world (state plane) coordinates. More and more surveyors are using GPS systems that use coordinates and are moving away from the old station and offset method. I would love a dimension command that would call out the northing and easting or at least X and Y coordinates of an object.
A friend of mine created a lisp routine that works that works for now but it should really be in AutoCAD as regular command.

I do this quite a bit myself......Suggest upgrade to Land Desktop which incorporates all of your survey command needs. It really is a great program. The hours you spend listing and labeling with text is narrowed down to a single command and placement. It also has a running dialog box which shows the northing easting which comes in handy.

Trey

[mtlynn]

There is currently a label command in Land Desktop, under the Labels menu, Label North/East. Hope that helps.

[JASONM30395]

Look up "ordinate dimensions". Might have something that you would find useful.

[Rick.B]

You may also be able to use fields in conjunction with a block or circle.
Insert the block at the point you want labeled and create text next to the block, insert a field in the text and select the Object Field Name, choose the Position Property and remove the check mark from the X and Z boxes. This will create the text for the northing. Next insert a field for the easting in the same manner except add the check back in to the X and remove it from the Y. You can add the Z if you want the elevation of the inserted block to be displayed as well. Now this all seems like a lot of work for each point but here is the kicker, just copy the block and text (together) to any other place on the screen and the coordinates will update, depending on your FIELDEVAL settings, when you Regen.

FYI I am using R2005.

[nilsvei]

All of these suggestions are OK, but gives the wrong results. Since this is a topic on the wish list - I gladly sign up for this wish since there is no good way (as all these suggestions shows) to present coordinates from Autocad.

I too works with coordinates with Autocad, and I have tried all of these suggestions to overcome the lack of a easy way to present coordinates from Autocad.

The suggestion to upgrade to Land desktop is fair - and probably the best way to work with coordinates. However - since software needs to pay off - the argument for easy way to present the coordinates is just not good enough. After all you have to work a certain amount with coordinates before you will see you earn money compare to the price of the software. Land Desktop is great for survey works - but shows its lack in other fields where other applications shows their strength. Autocad is the poorest solution - but it is the most flexible solution so the choice of software would naturally fall down to autocad being the software that shows profit from the work done compared to the cost of software.

Ordinate dimensions are poor. Not much customizable and they shows the amount of units. Working with Geo data and architectural/structural data at the same time require the use of the same units. Normally that is, in my case, 1 mm = 1 unit. Ordinate measurement gives therefor the coordinates in mm by default (it is possible to change that in object properties) I have yet to find a way to use mm measurements for linear and aligns measuring and at the same time put the ordinate measuring into m mode (witch is the way coordinates needs to be presented). Ordinate dimensions also require two measures for each point to be able to show the X/Y data, Z data can not be measured with Ordinate dimension (in plane view).

The text - or leader with fields would be great, if it had not been for the mm problem. the only way you can use fields this way is to get object field data from the object (block or circle) and then scale the circle with base point 0,0 - scale factor 0.001. Using this method gives you the correct coordinates once, if you move the point - you would have to do the same all over again. This way you will get the coordinates in m. It should have been as easy as ordinate dimension -or at least possible to divide the field data by 1000 - but that just sounds too easy. If that was possible you could move the point all over the screen and you would also always have accurate coordinates.
Fields should also have the options to pick the X, Y, Z data from a table in layouts to objects in model space. This way the coordinates given in tables would always be accurate with the point in model space.

The best way is a lsp routine witch picks the coordinates from a leaders start point, but in my case - that would mean X value had to be presented as Y and Y value in X - at the same time as the value have to be converted from mm to m. So far I have not seen anything like that anywhere. I think there might be a problem with the divide for that function, but i am not a programmer - I am a designer.

I think I have read something about this issue is going to be better in Autocad 2006. I would not believe so before I actually sees it, but it would be a great gesture if the Autocad programmers suddenly have started taking the use of Autocad in metric system seriously for once.

[jpaulsen]

As many of the posts mention this can be done easily in LDT. However, IMO this should be in core AutoCAD also.