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Units for US Survey Feet and International Feet

Units for US Survey Feet and International Feet

I would like to have US Survey Feet and International Feet added as units of measurement like they are in Autocad. Currently Revit treats them the same which has caused problems when linking in geolocated Autocad files (in US Survey Feet) and Point Clouds (in International Feet) from a civil engineer. Autocad brings them in perfectly aligned because it knows that each one's "feet" is different. Revit thinks both units are just standard feet so they don't align. The difference is negligible when the geolocation point is close to the surveyed area, but that is usually not the case. On my project it was 20 miles away so the survey and cloud showed up about 3ft off from each other.

9 Comments
samuelsanf
Advisor

Hi @htimsb ,

 

Revit since 2021 we have US Survey Feet as unit of measurement/modeling. Or You're saying that International and US Survey Feet in Revit have the same lenght? (1.000000 US Survey Feet should be equal to 1.000002 International Feet; but I just tried and it convert with properly factor).

 

I know Revit lack of US Survey Feet as Import Unit, which make no sense. But a not so elegant workarround is to apply a custom scale factor. Also we lack for it as Export Unit (CAD export), there is no workarround, I have to move the drawing in CAD manually. Export and Import with USsf is very important for infrastructure project, for site conditions/topography in all projecto, and also for export with correct coordinates system values.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/revit/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2021/ENU/Revit-W... 

samuelsanf
Advisor

Hi, @kimberly_fuhrman-jones , I think this idea should be marked as Implemented

Status changed to: Implemented

@samuelsanf , you are correct! Thank you for catching this one!

htimsb
Explorer

Hi. Original poster here. Just to be clear, does "Implemented" mean that Revit now will recognize a civil cadd file in US Survey Feet AND a point cloud (or other file) in International Feet as different unit types the same way Autocad does, and automatically bring them in appropriately scaled? So I don't have to scale one after inserting when I have linked files of both types? That was the original request.

Thanks,

Status changed to: Accepted

Hi, @htimsb ,

 

Thank you for the additional clarification. We have added Survey Feet to CAD files, however not to cloud models, and not automatic on insert at this time. However, this continues to be work in progress, so I will revert this to Accepted. My apologies for the confusion! 

 

-Kimberly

@kimberly_fuhrman-jones  Pleased to know that Autodesk are implementing ideas that achieve a total vote of 4! Especially when all the countries in the world that officially use imperial measurements are under trade embargoes that prevent Autodesk actually selling software to them (the USA is officially metric which is why all your building codes are in mm with inches in brackets for the old timers who still cling to the golden days before independance from the empire). end of sarcastic rant.

htimsb
Explorer

@MichaelWarwick7522 Autodesk has long had both US Survey Feet and International Feet as units options in Autocad. This is simply adding US Survey Feet to Revit so their products coordinate seamlessly as is necessary since most civil work is still done in Autocad. Both measurement systems have been used for some time in the US. Though Survey Feet are due to be officially deprecated at a federal level at the end of this year, state level and historical use will take time to go away. In the meantime, Revit managing to handle both will be increasingly important to the accuracy of large-scale projects and ones that have to contend with surveys completed in both systems. As an aside, the "officialness" of the metric system in the US is not so cut and dry, and our codes in fact use inches as the default with metric equivalents in brackets.

@htimsb when the idea of survey feet was proposed I suggested to Autodesk a more general approach such as AutoCADs units file. We come across property plans with a number of different archaic measurements, not only feet, but also chains, furlong, etc - however it seems that they had already implemented it and looked somewhat abashed at having the obvious pointed out. Not sure why Autodesk think this is important, at the scales Revit works at the difference between survey feet and feet is almost too small for Revit to dimension, the difference being only 2mm per kilometre and as you've pointed out, it is about to go the way of the chain and furlong.

MatthewTLohden
Community Visitor

@MichaelWarwick7522 Since State Plane coordinates in the US use origin points that are many miles away the offsets between Survey Feet and International Feet can be quite significant. A project I am working on now has this issue. The offset is about 12ft and this is on a weird old survey system that's less than half as far from the origin as a typical State Plane system.

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