Revit 2021 - Rotate Project North Issues

[dbroad]

On the project I'm currently working on, I tried rotating the project north 180 deg from the manage tab.

1.  If a view was cropped, especially with a section box, it won't rotate. Those placed on sheets didn't rotate either.

2.  Some objects got left behind.  MEP sink and shower fixtures, MEP appliances, and base cabinets got left behind. Counters disappeared.

3.  Annotation elements get displaced, such as property line tags.

Has anyone else had this happen?  This feature seems only appropriate for early modelling I guess.

[barthbradley]

I don't understand what you are doing. Views have Orientation setting (True North or Project North).  That's where you change the Orientation.  

[barthbradley]

Is this what your Project Base Point reads? 

[barthbradley]

...have you considered Scope Boxes?  Maybe that would be a better approach here?  

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/revit/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2022/ENU/Revit-M...

[ToanDN]

Why do you need to rotate project base point?

[dbroad]

My goal was to have the model rotated so that the north direction was approximately the same as the true north (at least not nearly 180 from true north.  I didn't like elevation names that implied  orientation to be opposite of true.  If I use the project marker and enter 180 degrees, the site plan wouldn't look correct but none of the other views would've changed.  I tried to rotate the model itself, but that that broke almost everything. So I tried the rotate project north from the manage tab.  It almost worked but left a bit to work out.  I still don't understand why it left some stuff unrotated.

If all the views are uncropped(which is easy to do with the project browser) and if the views aren't placed on sheets, "rotate project north" will adjust almost everthing except what I mentioned in the OP.  This did also change the project north angle to 180 from true north but I could change that back to 0.  After doing that, I did have to rotate the property line 180 degrees but everthing did work, after some view renaming.  I did have to rotate and move the few items that got left behind and did have to replace the counter but it did work.

If I'd just rotated project north by using the marker, then all the views would have still been nearly opposite of the actual orientation. Guess I'm a bit OCD.

[ToanDN]

Then rotate True North.

[chughes]

Yes, it sounds like you want to rotate your True North, not your Project North.  Rotating Project North makes all sorts of bad things happen.  I while back I put together a video to help me remember the workflow to rotate True North.

This method only seems to work with property lines created by sketch, however.  If you create by distances and bearing, recreate the lines by sketch and pick lines, and delete the original distances and bearing property lines.

[barthbradley]

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@dbroad wrote:

I didn't like elevation names that implied  orientation to be opposite of true.   Guess I'm a bit OCD.

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Actually, based on this statement, it sounds like just renaming the Views would make you happy (e.g. "North" to "South", "South" to "North", so on and so forth).   Maybe Rotate Project North/True North is a sledgehammer remedy for a flyswatter issue.   

I could be wrong. 😉 

[dbroad]

Renaming the elevation views doesn't change the orientation of the project north in the plan views.  I wanted both to be consistent.  Rotating true north also doesn't change the orientation of plans that are project north.  I didn't mind up to a 45 degree difference between project and true north but didn't want more.

I might use rotate true north in the future and live with the orientation issues in project north views.

Thanks everyone for chiming in.

[dbroad]

I had used scope boxes to crop most of my views.

[ToanDN]

What orientation issues you think you would have by rotating True North?

[dbroad]

As I said before, I want project north views to be rotated 180 degrees without converting them to true north views.  Rotating true north doesn't affect project north views.  Both true north and project north directions must be rotated in order to reset the project. This does break things and does require renaming some elevation views but, if the project isn't too broken by the process, it is worth it to me.  The failure to rotate some objects is a program bug IMO that should be fixed because rotating the project north can be valuable. There are also some variations if property lines were sketched vs entered as a table.  These issues can be fixed either by rotating the sketched property lines or by converting them to tables.

[barthbradley]

Keep your Architectural Planning separate from your Site/Plot Planning. Property Lines are part of the Plot Plan. 

True North and Project North are typically at 12 o’clock high in Site Plans. A lot friendlier if you are drawing Property Line segments by distance and bearing method. 

Architectural Planning is typically done orthogonally - irrespective of where “True North” might ultimately end up being.  Naturally, Project North in Architectural Planning is at 12 o’clock high. Top of the page, so to speak.   

Link your Architectural Project into your Site Project and orient the building relative to the Property Lines/Setback Envelope.  By “orient the building”, I mean to physically move and rotate the Architectural Link inside the Site Plan.  Once you’ve established its correct orientation in the Site Plan, go to Manage: Coordinates and press Publish Coordinates.  Save and Close the Site Project. 

Open Architectural Project. Link the Site Project into the Architectural Project via Auto – By Shared Coordinates Positioning.  Go to a Plan View that captures the Building and Property Lines within the Link and toggle the View Orientation back and forth between Project North and True North.  Watch the magic happen.

Or you could not do any of this and just carry on doing whatever you’re doing.  

Good luck.     

[ToanDN]

Did you start the model with Project North 180 degree from True North by choice or by accident?

[dbroad]

Which project?  The demo / screencast was just an illustration. The project I was trying to get help on was modeled  facing one way in project north plans and I wanted it to have the opposite plan orientation. I’m Ok with continuing to continue to explain things but I’ve modified my real project and noted what I believe is a Revit bug. I don’t think continuing to hash this out will help. Signing off on this thread. 

[barthbradley]

There is no BUG shown in your screencast.   

You start by pointing out Old Project North (e.g. OPN), which is actually the current Project North, and New Project North (e.g. NPN), and telling us the objective is to rotate the PROJECT North 180-degrees.  But then in frame 0:58 you change the Project Base Point’s Angle to TRUE North and say it does nothing.  Well sure it does nothing. The View Orientation is set to PROJECT North.  The Site Plan’s View Orientation, however, is set the True North. That’s why it looks “correct”. But besides all that, you explained at the start that you wanted to change PROJECT North.  Changing Angle to TRUE North would not affect PROJECT North. Rotate PROJECT North will though. 

Now, going forward in your screencast at around frame 3:39, you are showing how you trying to rotate the Property Line by using Rotate True North. That’s not the way you rotate elements. If you want to rotate the Property Line, then you use the Rotate tool.  Rotate Project North and Rotate True North is only changing the VIEW ORIENTATION, akin to rotating a piece of paper on your desk.   If you rotate a piece of paper 180-degrees, then everything on that sheet of paper is upside-down. If you move your chair to the opposite side of the desk and look at that piece of paper, everything on that piece of paper is now right-side up again. So, in this analogy, chair position #1 could be named "True North" and chair position #2 could be name "Project North", and you could pick which chair to sit in.  Or you could just leave the chair where it's at and rotate the piece of paper on the desk.   Whatever's easier. 🙂        

 Hope this helps.