Scaling skew from original file to new file

[colinV5BWC]

My architect I work with changed his drawing so where one building corner is a little over 10' from the eastern boundary (it used to be a little over 8'), but once I brought it into my drawing, it was 6.7337 feet from the boundary. I sent him my drawing and he ended up with the same problem when he brought his drawing into my file. What's troubling is that the boundary line is the same dimensions in both drawings, the parking spaces measure out correctly, North to South measure out correct, the southern building is exactly 5' off in both drawings, but the buildings on the west side are 1' further to the east than they should be and the buildings on the east side are close to 3' further west than they should be. 

I thought I could simply align the building with the existing architectural features, but it basically falls in at the same place as the original, slightly off. How could it become so skewed and still not align?

Edit: I will mention that I am using civil 3d, but the problem occurs as soon as I bring the drawing.

[RobDraw]

If you share the files, you will get a definitive answer. Otherwise, you're just going to get guesses.

[colinV5BWC]

Here are the files I'm working with. 

[colinV5BWC]

Any idea on this, I don't know what the solution is.

[Pointdump]

Hi Colin,
I've looked at your drawings and re-read your post at least 6 times and I still don't understand. Can you explain a little more, and maybe add some screenshots showing the problem?
Dave

[colinV5BWC]

So my problem is, when I bring in the architectural drawing to my drawing, the building on the top right goes from being 10' 2.5" from the boundary to 6.73' even before I scale or align it. I'm not sure how this is happening because the parking stays as 19' and the southern building stays 5' from the boundary. I'm not exactly sure if I can clarify more than that, but the architect took my drawing and had the same issue. If for some reason you aren't having the same problem, then I'm even more confused. I can attach pdfs if it helps, but even without measuring, there is a visual skew with the buildings and boundary. 

Thank you for taking the time to look at this for me. 

Edit: When I say skew, I may mean displacement of the building. It's just off and I don't understand it at all. maybe it's a 3d thing I don't understand.

[colinV5BWC]

[Pointdump]

Colin,
OK, so I open C21018 000 Humble Westfield Rd.dwg and it's in US Survey Feet, and FloorPlan-A-FP01-Site.dwg is in inches. How are you bringing in the architectural drawing into the civil drawing?
I'm really struggling to see what you see. Which line is the boundary line?
Dave

[colinV5BWC]

I'm just copying floor plan A into C21018. Even before scaling between inches to feet, there is a difference between the building to boundary. Boundary is green on plan A and red when you bring it to 21018. The pictures I posted show the difference, I wish I knew how to explain better.

I really have no idea what's going on and if you have advice I appreciate it, if you're not getting the same issue, then I'd love to know why. I won't be able to reply after this until Thursday due to meetings schedule, but I will get back as soon as I can. 

[Pointdump]

Colin,
It took me a while, but I finally figured out what you were saying. This problem boils down to a units conflict. The Floor Plan Drawing doesn't know whether its units are feet or inches. As for the "correct" fix, I don't know. I can't get things to work with Copy/Paste. But XRef works.

In the Floor Plan Drawing:
-DWGUNITS
Unit for length <2>: 1(Inches)
Scale objects in current drawing to reflect change in units? [Yes/No] <Yes>: N
Save Drawing

In Civil Drawing:
Xref >> Attach Floor Plan Drawing >> Scale X & Y: 0.083333 >> Specify On-Screen

Dave

[colinV5BWC]

Interesting, I've never had this issue before. The architects original file worked out, I'm not sure why it's different this time. I'll try xrefing it in and see what happens. Thank you for taking the time to come up with a workable solution for me.

[ChicagoLooper]

Hi @colinV5BWC 

There's a discrepancy. Compare FloorPlan-A-FP01-Site.dwg vs. C21018 000 Humble Westfield Rd.dwg

RESERVE B BTU

Open the xref named RESERVE B BTU. The parcel boundary consists of four lines and are shown in red. Click on the northernmost red line adjacent to Humble Westfield Rd. and with the line still selected, scroll to the bottom of the Properties Palette. Verify the Length and Angle displayed at the bottom of the Properties Palette is consistent with the bearing and distance shown in the surveyor's annotation. Verify the remaining three boundary lines. How do they compare with the surveyor's annotation?

COPY WITH BASE POINT

Next copy the four red lines in RESERVE B BTU to your clipboard using the northwest corner of the parcel as your basepoint. 

FloorPlan-A-FP01-Site

Go to FloorPlan drawing and isolate the property boundary which is represented by the block named 'Family - ___-4275233-A-FP01 - Site' and sits on the layer named C-PROP-LINE. Paste the contents of you clipboard to the NW corner of the property boundary. 

Scale YES but do NOT rotate yet!!!

Since the surveyor's drawing has units of feet and your architectural drawing has units of feet & inches, you'll need to scale the surveyor's boundary by 12X. Scale the surveyor's linework using the NW corner as your basepoint. This scaling will increase the distance listed in the surveyor's drawing but it won't, shouldn't and can't, affect the bearing. 

Survey vs. Architectural

As you already  know, the architectural drawing doesn't have the same orientation as the surveyor's drawing. If you disregard the surveyor's bearings and rotate his line work anyway, you can perform a 'distance' comparison. Rotate all four surveyor's boundaries using the NW corner as your basepoint. Rotate all boundaries by aligning the boundary adjacent to Humble Westfield Rd. so it has the same orientation as the architect's northern boundary. After you've rotated, compare the linework at the four corners. How do they look? 

Just curious. Did the surveyor provide you with the original survey? Would like to know whether he placed his linework in real world coordinates? When Bing Aerial imagery is turned on in Reserve B BTU, his line work isn't in Texas South Central. It's too far south.

[colinV5BWC]

Sorry I never got back on this, fell into holidays and the job got put on hold, then I forgot to check back on the solution. The owner changed from commercial to multi-fam and now I'm looking at it again with another year of cad knowledge, but still haven't had this problem. 

It came in correctly the first time with no skewing issues and perfectly aligned. But when we went to change things the architects drawings came in differently. He says he's using revit and the precision may not be the same, which seems correct because the angles are not correct and it's not connecting. I'm not sure how the first file could land correctly but everything else is off and each file I get is a little mre skewed.

[ChicagoLooper]

Hi @colinV5BWC 

Thank you for uploading your files (post #3 in this thread). You have uploaded 3 dwg's: (a) Floor Plan, (b) C21018, and (c) Reserve B. You only need the Floor Plan and the Reserve B, the proposed buildings and the survey, respectively. The drawing named C21018 is a civil, analytical type drawing, so unless you need alignments, tinn surfaces, a volume calculation and surface profiles, you won't need this drawing because it won't play a role when trying to harmonize the building layout with the linework from the survey.

Do this:

1. Open a brand new, clean imperial drawing that has your standard office titleblock. Use MAPCSASSIGN to assign the coordinate system shown (image-1).  

Image-1

2. Add the Floor Plan.dwg as an xref. Add Reserve B.dwg as an xref too. The survey drawing you uploaded filed the survey in a subfolder, and to be clear, this is the survey you'll need to xref (image-2). The C21018.dwg file wasn't used at any point in this exercise.

Image-2

3. The survey drawing contains the property boundary in RED (see image-3).

Image-3

4. The Floor Plan is a busy drawing. The GREEN rectangle is the property boundary. You'll need to match the green property boundary in the floor plan with the red property outline in the survey. When the green property outline is consistent with the red survey, the xrefs will be in harmony. If you isolate the building footprints and the green rectangle in the floor plan, the floor plan is less busy and will look like this (image-4).  

Image-4

<<Unfortunately, the green outline from the design drawing doesn't have an exact match with the red survey outline. It might be a 2 foot difference or it might be less than one-half foot. Either way, this offends many users (too many) even though it shouldn't. Move the two north vertices of the green (flr pln) on top of the red (survey) and you're done--continue with your day. You can't get more than 2 vertices to match perfectly. The 'designer' will take (should take) the heat for errors in prop boundary, not you.  

5. Instead of painstakingly trying to put the green floor plan boundary on the red survey, you can simply insert the floor plan as an xref using the parameters shown below (image-5).  After completing step 5, both xrefs will be in harmony.

Image-5

6. OPTIONAL. If you wish to make your new drawing with the inserted xrefs geospatially accurate so their X/Y coordinates AND their Lat/Longs are both consistent with real world equator and real world north pole, continue reading. 

Someone, maybe your boss or maybe you, moved the floor plan and the survey linework southward by 10,000,000 feet. Or maybe the surveyor created an ADJUSTED  State Plane coordinate system so he'd have smaller Y-values. Then the floor plan designer might have simply followed the surveyor. No a big deal, right? Any-whoo, the Y-values in the xrefs are currently undervalued by exactly 10,000,000 feet.

Does anyone care about the sound of one hand clapping? If a tree falls in a forest does the Pope hear it? If a user moves an xref 10,000,000 feet to the south, does it really affect your drawing? It doesn't affect your drawing unless you want it to be geospatially accurate so the Lat/Longs are correct and you want to use Bing Aerial imagery as a basemap (see image-6).

Image-6

7. Select both xrefs and move them north 10,000,000 feet. Turn on ortho when moving them. You don't need to move in the X-direction, no moving to the left and no moving right, just move directly towards the top of your monitor. Be accurate. Move straight and you'll end up with a drawing that's consistent when Bing imagery is turned on (see image-7).

Image-7. This is your site, correct?