Smart north arrow

[HVAC-Novice]

I know this has been discussed in the past (to no avail), but maybe someone came up with a solution. Is there a way to place a north arrow on a view that shows the actual'views project and actual north? 

I have a family that can do that, but I have to manually enter the degrees. what I'm looking for is a smart annotation that can show correct project and true north.

I don't use dynamo and other fancy programming, so i look for a solution with the " normal" Revit tools. 

[barthbradley]

Sure. Set Angle to True North, change View to True North and insert Compass with North at 12 o'clock. 

[HVAC-Novice]

I'm not sure I follow. Many views are not showing north at 12'o'clock and project north may differ. 

I'm looking for an arrow that changes direction based on where true and project north are in each view. some views i turn 90 degrees to fit on a page etc.

[ToanDN]

Change the view to True North, place symbol North up, change the view back to Project North.
If you are scared of changing True North Project North then create a plan view True North, place the symbol there, copy paste aligned the symbol from that view to other views.

[barthbradley]

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@HVAC-Novice wrote:

I'm not sure I follow. Many views are not showing north at 12'o'clock and project north may differ. 

I'm looking for an arrow that changes direction based on where true and project north are in each view. some views i turn 90 degrees to fit on a page etc.

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True North and Project North are View Properties. Angle to True North (set in the Project Base Point) is Global. 

[HVAC-Novice]

I see. I best do that in the very beginning before I turn views. Seems almost the same amount of work (and diligence) as manually changing the north arrow family parameters. 

however, is there an arrow that does it automatically, not matter under what conditions i place it? 

[barthbradley]

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@HVAC-Novice wrote:

I see. I best do that in the very beginning before I turn views. Seems almost the same amount of work (and diligence) as manually changing the north arrow family parameters. 

however, is there an arrow that does it automatically, not matter under what conditions i place it? 

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Sure, but it would require more work.  You would need to build in the Angle to True North into the Compass. Just Create the compass with North at 12 o'clock and before placing it in a View, set the View to True North.  Easy, breezy.  

[HVAC-Novice]

I already have a compass family that manually accepts true and project degree numbers and shows the 2 arrows accordingly. so right now i place the compass and change the 2 degree parameters. 

The part that is missing is the automatic process of taking the degree values from the actual view rotation.

[barthbradley]

Well, there is no way to do that natively.  I suppose I could find a way to do that through Dynamo, but seems like an awful lot of work for something I do easily using the 2-step workflow described above.  

Excuse me.  3-steps:

1. Change View to True North

2. Place Compass

3. Change View back to Project North

Do you know about Clipboard Copy/Paste to View? 

[ToanDN]

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@HVAC-Novice wrote:

I see. I best do that in the very beginning before I turn views. Seems almost the same amount of work (and diligence) as manually changing the north arrow family parameters. 

however, is there an arrow that does it automatically, not matter under what conditions i place it? 

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It doesn't matter when you do it.  As said, if you are not comfortable switching back and fourth orientation (sometime you can't do it if others are working on the same view) then use the copy paste workflow.

[HVAC-Novice]

I still have no solution....

But I made my life easier by adding a global parameter for the true north. A least I don't have to do the thinking over and over. Hope this helps someone at least a bit. 

[Sahay_R]

The closest would be to create an arrow family with a rotation parameter, and then in the project control it by a global parameter.

[ToanDN]

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@HVAC-Novice wrote:

I still have no solution....

But I made my life easier by adding a global parameter for the true north. A least I don't have to do the thinking over and over. Hope this helps someone at least a bit. 

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I take that all of your views are either Project North or True North.  If you have any view assigned to a rotated Scope Box then that True North Symbol by the global parameter won't work.

[FAIR59]

There isn't a family that is aware of true north and the internal coordinate system. You have to combine 2 elements to have a reporting global parameter for AngleToTrueNorth.

• Property Lines can be placed with a bearing to true north.
• An Adaptive Family  ( Adaptive PlacementPoint Orient to GlobalXYZ ) can be placed "aligned " to the internal coordinate system. 

Workflow:

• Place a property line with bearing 0°
• Make an Adaptive Family  with 1 adaptive PlacementPoint ( Adaptive PlacementPoint Orient to GlobalXYZ ), and modellines on the 3 main axis of the placementpoint.
• In the model, set Angle To North to a small positive value.
• Host the AdaptiveFamily onto the property line.
• Place angular dimension from the "north"axis line of the adaptive family to the property line.
• Label dimension with a reporting parameter  [angle_to_North_report]
•  Make a new angle Global parameter [ AngleToTrueNorth ] with formula  [=angle_to_North_report]   

You can drive your families with the [ AngleToTrueNorth ] parameter.

caveat: this system has to be "updated" after the use of [Manage ][ Project Location ][ Rotate Project North ] as this command also changes bearings of property lines (which it shouldn't do in my opinion ). 

Using the same kind of adaptive family, you can make a family with a compass always pointing to True North ( driven by the same global parameter. ( As it's a 3D-family it can't be placed on sheets. )

[HVAC-Novice · Accepted solution]

OK, I figured it out. I finally started learning Dynamo and have a dynamo script that reads out the "Angle to True North" from the Project Basepoint. It then selects the north arrow family and adjusts the True North part. 

Only caveat is if you place a view on a sheet and rotate the view 90°, the North arrow needs to be on the view BEFORE you rotate the view. 

The dynamo script adjusts the north arrows that are placed, so if you place a new arrow, you need to run it again. 

DYN and RFA files attached. If you have a better idea, I'm more than happy to improve mine. 

[HVAC-Novice · Accepted solution]

I actually have an improvement. My above script reads the deviation from true north and applies it to the Norths arrow family in the sheet. So far so good. the problem is, when you create a new sheet, that north arrow is at default and you have to run the script again. Obviously you can forget this and then you have a sheet with wrong arrow. 

I ended up creating a global parameter called "ANGLE TRUE NORTH" and had the north arrows controlled by that. The angle in the sheet family has to be tied to the global parameter. That way any new sheet, also shows the correct angle. For my projects i don't have survey data, and create the true north on a view manually anyway. But i got an idea... I took my above script and let it adjust the global parameter "ANGLE TRUE NORTH". that way that parameter is set correctly once based on the actual true north, and all sheets created AFTERWARDS will have correct North arrows. 

IMHO, this is a bit better since it:

- allows you to set the angle manually globally

- allows you to set it automatically and also for future sheets.

Hope this helps someone. (and this time I figured it out myself, without copying someone else's homework 🙂

[ToanDN]

Do you have one True North arrow per sheet or per view?

[HVAC-Novice]

I put it on the sheet since I was fed up placing it on each view. See attached titleblocks.

In the project you need to create the global parameter and tie to the parameter in the sheet family. I have the set up in my template.

If I had a view that is 90° turned, I guess I would have to add a separate North arrow. But in my projects that doesn't really happen.  Then I guess I can do the same to the north arrow family (have it controlled by the global parameter). 

[curtisridenour]

is the dynamo script still necessary if you have a global parameter? also, nice graphics scale you got in the title block.

[ToanDN]

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@HVAC-Novice wrote:

I put it on the sheet since I was fed up placing it on each view. See attached titleblocks.

In the project you need to create the global parameter and tie to the parameter in the sheet family. I have the set up in my template.

If I had a view that is 90° turned, I guess I would have to add a separate North arrow. But in my projects that doesn't really happen.  Then I guess I can do the same to the north arrow family (have it controlled by the global parameter). 

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Well if you put on the titleblock then you could have rotated it directly in the title ONCE then it is set for life for the project.  Or do you use the same titleblock family for every project?