My understanding is that Revit does not work with large extents as will often be the case with geolocated dwgs, and that it’s a necessary step to move geolocated cad drawings to the origin for the purpose of linking dwgs into Revit.
Is this correct?
Because it’s sometimes useful or essential for drawings to be geolocated in Rhino/AutoCad (perhaps especially in Landscape Architecture contexts), when working between Autocad/Rhino and Revit I find myself creating parallel AutoCad/Rhino files labelled ‘geolocated’ and ‘moved to origin’. This can quickly become a headache in terms of file management/ keeping multiple files updated.
Can anyone recommend a best practice workflow when working between Autocad/Rhino and Revit in terms of geolocation and placing dwgs into Revit projects consistently?
Many thanks.
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Revit does not mind a file with geometry at a great distance from the file origin. It does NOT like a file with elements that are both close to the origin AND very far from the origin when that results in an overall file extent greater than 20 miles (X/Y AND Z).
Use a single DWG file that defines the relationship to the real world site location. Acquire Coordinates from that file. Then any other DWG file can be linked using By Shared Coordinates.
Steve Stafford
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Hi @hughecchapman
Thanks a lot for posting your question to the forums! Has the solution suggested by @SteveKStafford helped with your issue?
We look forward to hearing back from you with more information so we can help you as a community!

Jonathan Hand
Industry Community Manager | AEC (Architecture & Building)
Thanks @SteveKStafford.
I think the issue I've had previously may have been caused by a messy inherited geolocated dwg with some random flotsam objects near the origin, causing a large extent as you describe.
Makes a lot of sense to keep reference dwgs geolocated as you describe ![]()
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