US Survey Feet is Finally Here

As a Civil Engineer and Infrastructure Application Specialist at Ideate, I'm celebrating along with Surveyors, Mappers, and Civil Engineers in nine states… AutoCAD 2017 based products now support US Survey Feet! 

It's been something we've wanted for years because many of us assign our drawings a State Plane Coordinate System (SPCS) using AutoCAD Map 3D or AutoCAD Civil 3D. US Survey Feet is preferred by California, Texas, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Indiana, North Carolina, Nebraska, and Wyoming. The issue up until now, was that although Map 3D and Civil 3D functionality understood coordinate systems, and the difference between a US Survey Foot and an International Foot, underlying AutoCAD did not. AutoCAD tools to attach External References, insert blocks, and ReCap point clouds, auto-scale based on International Feet. The difference between a US Survey Foot (~0.3048006 meters) and an International Foot (0.3048 meters exactly) is quite small. Yet it makes a significant difference when you are working in large state plane coordinate values for mapping and civil engineering projects.

Now the sobering news… because 'US Survey Feet' is a new unit to AutoCAD (INSUNITS=21), potentially undesired automatic scaling of Xrefs will occur if we are not careful. Why do I say that?

Externally referencing a ‘legacy’ engineering drawing (pre 2017), set to Intl Feet, into a 2017 'US Survey Feet' units drawing will now be automatically scaled, regardless of whether the application performing the reference is AutoCAD 2017, Map 3D 2017 or Civil 3D 2017. This will also occur even if the referenced drawing is assigned a coordinate system based on US Survey Feet. Remember that attaching an Xref is an AutoCAD based tool. The auto-scaling will not be obvious in the Attach External Reference dialog because the default Drawing Units length precision in most drawings is set to four decimal places.

Now, if you set your Drawing Units length precision to six decimal places, you'll see a scaling factor of 0.999998.

This is the ratio of Intl Feet to US Survey Feet, which comes to about 2 feet for every 1 million feet. It's negligible for low coordinate value drawings, but not for our state plane coordinate drawings. 

In the below screen shot, I've externally referenced an Intl Foot drawing into a new 'US Survey Feet' drawing. Note that the coordinates of the same point differ by -12.51, -4.07. 

Also note that 'US Survey Feet' is not understood by AutoCAD versions prior to 2017. You'll get the below warning upon changing the units. An AutoCAD 2017 created drawing can still be opened by AutoCAD 2013-2016.

Lastly, some of you may be aware of an old undocumented AEC command called -DWGUNITS. It's occasionally used to address block insertion scaling of 12x or 1/12 even when INSUNITS is correct in both drawings. Because it's old and undocumented, it does not include US Survey Feet.

Although it's great news that Autodesk finally added US Survey Feet to AutoCAD's supported units, we may not fully realize the benefit for a few more releases. Until then, I recommend setting the Drawing Units length precision to six decimal places for all drawings assigned US Survey Feet. Doing so will give you the visual prompt of the auto-scaling AutoCAD is about to perform.

For more information on training and consulting for the various products Ideate services, visit our website at www.ideateinc.com

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Daniel Armstrong
ENI Application Specialist
Daniel is an Application Specialist for Infrastructure Solutions at the Ideate Sacramento office. He is a California licensed Civil Engineer and LSIT with over 9 years land development design experience and 6 years Civil–GIS software consulting. Additionally, he provided 6 years of engineering support at a municipal public works department. At Ideate, Daniel assists Civil Engineering and Surveying firms in maximizing their utilization of AutoCAD Civil 3D through consulting, training, mentoring, and technical support. He conducts standard classroom and custom training on AutoCAD, Map 3D, and Civil 3D.

Inserting a Bing Map Image - AutoCAD 2015

At Ideate we have been hard at work, rummaging through all of the new software and highlighting the most important new features in the 2015 product line. Last year AutoCAD added a function that allowed you to add map images from Bing to your drawings. This year, that functionality has been enhanced and improved.

Geolocation Map Insert Basics

First, I’d like to review how this function works. On the insert tab of your ribbon, you can access the Set Location > From Map function.  

After you agree to the terms of service, the Geographic Location – Specify Location (Page 1 of 2) box will pop up. Choosing a location is now broken into two pages within the Geographic Location box, as seen below. First, indicate an address in the Specify Location box. After you search and drop a pin at the location, click the next button go to the Set Coordinate System box. In here, only relevant coordinate systems are shown. Also, added to the 2015 release is the ability to search for other coordinate systems.

Once a coordinate system is selected and the center point and north arrow is specified, you will be allowed to zoom in and out on your image.

New Features

In addtion to the location tools and image type options (Map Aerial, Roads, Hybrid, or off) on the Geographic Location tab, you can Capture an Area and Viewport for plotting purposes and to preserve the current map data. This embeds the map into the drawing and allows you to work offline. 

After creating your Captured Area or Viewport, a Map Image tab will appear when the boundary of the area or viewport is selected. This tab has additional editing features, including changing the image resolution, brightness, contrast and fade. Additionally the boundary area can be edited using grips or other AutoCAD commands. Lastly, to ensure that the image is up to date, you can update the image while you are online.

To recap the new additions to the Image Map function, below is a list of the improvements.

1. The Geographic Location box is now broken into two boxes, the first being the location and the second being the coordinate system 
2. The ability to search for a coordinate system
3. The ability to capture and embed an area with a selection box or viewport to be accessed when offline
4. The Map Image tab that has Image Resolution, Image Controls, and Reload Image options for the embedded area
5. The ability to edit the embedded map area grip and boundary using common commands

Keep up with the new and improved features of Autodesk software by regularly checking this blog. Ideate’s technical team is dedicated to sifting through and illuminating new and improved features in the 2015 releases. Also check out this video to learn more about Geolocation Map Insert Basics.

Also, for information on training and consulting for the various products Ideate services, visit our website at www.ideateinc.com

Don’t forget to look through other great features our Ideate Technical Team has found in the new 2015 releases for Revit MEP, Revit Structure, Revit Architecture, AutoCAD and more: ideateinc.com/2015

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Kate Ming, P.E.
Ideate AEC Application Specialist

Kate is an Application Specialist at Ideate, Inc. and is a Professional Engineer with 6 years of industry experience. At Ideate, Kate provides training, consulting and technical support services for our customers.