How do you handle dynamic north arrows for your organization?
The views and north arrow is linked in our template sheets, that are used for PP or just Plan sheets, and the dwt says created with an earlier version (if that helps), but I'm with @ToddRogers-WPM that I've personally had nothing but issues with this corrupting view ports and making things just disappear that I can't say that I'd recommend it.
Rick Jackson
Survey CAD Technician VI
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I agree with @ToddRogers-WPM and @rl_jackson .
I guess that I am just old-school.
I believe that Standards and Company Data belong on servers, not local machines.
Civil 3D is like a male dog. It seems to leave a mark wherever it has been.
Civil 3d is also a mutt. Part AutoCAD, part Map 3D, part Architecture and a poorly fitted pressure pipe philosophy from Plant 3D.
This can be efficient but targeting blame and responsibility becomes very difficult as seen here.
I have been at this for over 40 years. One of the first things I learned is that every plan sheet has a north arrow and scale. Civil 3D (C3D) makes it easy to adjust viewport scale and rotation. Keeping the associated north arrow and scales in sync? ... not so much.
North Arrows and Scale bars are fundamental. Proper syncing is not going to be a major achievement. Lack of proper sync in not a fatal flaw. Resolving this is not going to be greeted by cheers. The reaction will be 'duh' or 'about damned time'. While this is not a strong motivation, Autodesk should have some pride and just fix this.
Any thoughts, @lim.wendy?
I am old, so I am going to add a story.
My father was also a Civil Engineer, graduating in 1951 and first registered in 1955.
Where he was working, the engineers drafted much of there own work. He took the plans for his first project to his boss to review. His boss told him that "It looks fine to me. The reviewer will find something to comment on though, so erase the north arrow. Let's let him find something that is easy to fix."
Christopher Stevens
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NOLA?
Christopher Stevens
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Hi Brian I concur. Those and the dynamic scale bars can go squirrely in civil3d. the crux I believe is in the Map3d path... I think they were designed and intended for Map/ Mapbooks
Joe Bouza
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We don't use them either. Its a shame that they aren't stable.
We do use our own graphic scale that has fields for the scale of the viewport. These are all set up in our template files. If a user should mess it up, the graphic scale is also a dynamic block with a selection for scale.
Thanks for all the feedback and comments. These are valid & practical concerns. Over the years, I have seen a number of cases raised on this issue, and in 2019, there's a new variable introduced.
MAPNORTHARROWDEFAULTNORTH allows user to specify whether the North Arrow points to the default north (i.e the angle of Pi/2) or the north defined in the current coordinate system.
When this command sets to 0, the North Arrow would point to the north defined in the coordinate system.
When this command sets to 1, the North Arrow would point to the default north.
Resetting the North Arrow
If you would like to reset the north arrow to rotate to reflect the coordinate system, enter the ResetNorthArrow command.
On a similar note, the common causes seemed to be one of these:
- Viewport got corrupted in the DWG. The same behavior with lost association can be observed with scale bars.
- The use of an old template of the layout and therefore the north arrow
- The north arrow was created in an older version of Autodesk AutoCAD Civil 3D and the drawing was migrated to the newer version of Autodesk Civil 3D
- "All layouts in the current drawing" option is used in the "Layout Creation Options" dialog
- Switching between the model view and the layout view.
- Related to assigned coordinate system
Some of these has been corrected with a Service pack/update. However, if you continue to see issues with this, I'll encourage all of you to submit your feedback either on the Feedback Community portal or feedback form.
@TimYarris, these are valuable concerns and feedback from users.
Thanks again for the feedback.
Thank you, @lim.wendy. I appreciate your advocacy.
I am not a cad manager, so I am kind of the junior partner in this thread. I do think that it interesting that most of the participants are Top Solution Authors.
With regard to Linked North arrow, I'm willing to use them, I'm wanting to use them, I'm waiting for them to be usable.
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I think that MAPNORTHARROWDEFAULTNORTH is meant to be used when the UCS is rotated.
For example, Architectural plans sheets often use building north, instead of survey north.
If that is the case, I just cannot get this to work. Any videos?
With regard to common causes:
- This is useful, but it begs the question; do linked north arrow behave badly in corrupt drawings, or to linked north arrows corrupt drawings?
- Does the batch save utility help with the old template/old drawing issue?
I am using C3D 2022 but my "Map - North Arrow.dwg" was last modified on 12/24/2011.
That seems pretty static over 12 releases.
I do hope to see some progress.
Thanks again,
Chris Sevens
Christopher Stevens
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