Is a Survey Point necessary?

[Brandon-W_DWa]

I understand that the Project Origin is just always (0,0), and that the Survey Point "provides a real-world context for the Archicad model... It represents a known topographical point in the physical world" (from the Native Survey Point Workflow Guide).

I feel comfortable stating that we never need real-world coordinates in our models. All I need is for our engineer's IFC models to import in our Archicad file at the same location (matching our project origin), elevation, and rotation. Should I even be using a Survey Point at all? If our project north is different from true north, then is a Survey Point required to convey that information? The Native Survey Point Workflow Guide suggests not: "A Survey Point is not required when exchanging models in local coordinates even to Revit.

I've had users' projects get really messy in coordination workflows because we thought we needed to set a Survey Point. What ended up happening is that none of our external IFC files came in at the right spot (coordinate, rotation, and sometimes even elevation). In that same project, I also had issues where I got different results depending on if I "Opened" the IFC, versus "merged from file". See my unanswered post about that here: IFC Imported from Revit: Rotation difference between "Open" vs. "Merge from file..." 

I'm finding all of the content on SP's pretty confusing, so any guidance would be appreciated.

Operating system used: Mac Apple Silicon 14.7.1 Sonoma

[CosminF]

Hi,

From my experience, a survey point isn't that necessary for the use case you mentioned. I too work frequently with engineers (structure, hvac, sanitary etc) and just agreeing on a 0.0.0 point location inside the project makes overlapping very easy (either by importing IFC or by hotlinking it). Also, if anything, we could always double check with the grid line system if the overlap is correct.

Project coordinates helped me when for example I wanted to add dimensions in sections related to sea level, but then again, that is not dependent on a survey point.

[Aaron Bourgoin]

my 2 cents: I wish the Survey Marker would actually georeference 2D output. I agree that is does and doesn't do much when used with IFC, but we run would have Authorities' that use GIS and rely on georeferencing. They live in a 2d world and don have to worry about the "far-from-origin" issues that plague Archicad and Revit users.