Setting/Moving drawing origin

[will.wydock]

We often get existing drawings in AutoCAD from our clients that we link into Revit as a starting point. Although they may come from the same place they generally do not have the same origin( structural grid intersection) and we have to manual move the content into the file  so that the grids are at the drawing origin.  Can a lisp help us with doing this?

[paullimapa]

Only if you know exactly how much to move it to match with your origin point and the difference is constant every time.

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[dbroad]

The easiest fix is to use the BASE command in the model tab in each non-standard drawing to locate the point common to your standard origin files.

If you use the move command instead, you risk messing the non-standard files up unless you:

1. save the layer state.
2. thaw all the layers.
3. move all the objects.
4. restore the layer state
5. iterate over each layout and fix every paperspace viewport.  This requires determining the lock state of each viewport and unlocking and restoring it. This may seem simple but if your viewports include 3d views, it can get quite complex.

Before you use the base command, I would recommend marking the original basepoint in the non-standard files with a non-plottable block.

The INSBASE variable can also be used to access and to set the basepoint in each layout.

For early versions, such as 2002, setting the BASE command could adversely affect some select/modify operations but no longer.

[john.uhden]

@dbroad wrote: "For early versions, such as 2002, setting the BASE command could adversely affect some select/modify operations but no longer."

You may be referring to the days of Softdesk and Land Desktop which stored the basepoint (and north rotation) in a semi-hidden location.

No offense to you of course, but it hardly mattered since the architects would rotate the world so they could see their building orthoganally (sp?).