I've come across the same problem, and probably for the same reason.
Due to some strange local government criteria, we have to document the building using their background, which is based off some strange datum point, and therefore our x/y coordinates are very, very long. I.e. the building is many kilometres from the origin.
I haven't tried relocating our building, as I found another workaround.
Creating the DWFs from Plotmaker solves the problem. No moving the origin, or relocating building required. It works with PM9... haven't tried previous versions.
Hope it helps!