Native Survey Point

This section is about The New Native Survey Point - ONE of the most requested improvements regarding project coordination.
Synchronizing with other stakeholder’s models that were originally created with different applications can be a cumbersome task. The new native Survey Point in Archicad 25 aims to make coordination easier, quicker and more consistent.
Instead of having to rely on a GDL object, the New Survey Point becomes a native part of Archicad.
It is now an integral part of the project and its coordinates’ data is closely attached to the project’s location settings.
A new added Library Part is capable of presenting coordinates in relation to the survey point for documentation purposes.
The Survey Point now has now a bigger impact on our exported and imported files.
Having the Survey Point in the project improves our model export and import workflows.
Let’s see what possibilities we have when it comes to import.
Regarding DWG, we can choose either if we want to link the drawing as an Xref, or if we want to Merge it. If we attach as an Xref, we can now check the “Align Merged File’s Origin and Rotate to Survey Point” setting so that the imported drawing will be aligned with the survey point in Archicad.
If we merge the file, a similar option is available with similar effect.
When we are importing an IFC, PLN or MOD files, we’ve introduced a new option for hotlinking these formats. In the Place Hotlink dialog, we can choose if we’d like to align the hotlink module with either the Project Origin, or the Survey Point.
If we take a look at this example, we’ll see that the hotlinked model’s origin and survey point are at the same location, and the building is located to the upper right. In the host file, we’ve changed the position of the survey point. If we align the model with the project origin, we can see that the hotlink will remain at the same position. That’ll be a common workflow between architects working on different parts of the project, but using the same project origin. But if we use the align to survey point option, the hotlinked module is repositioned according to survey point location and rotation. This way, we can collaborate with other stakeholders using real-world coordinates.
Let’s see how it affects the export methods. When we export an IFC file, the IFC model origin will be aligned with the Survey Point by default. However, a new translator option is coming in an update for Archicad 25, so soon we’ll be able to choose the IFC model’s origin - whether we’d like to use the survey point or project origin as the origin point of the IFC model.
Possibly the biggest improvement regarding DWG export, is that now we’ll have a dedicated option in the DWG Translator for Matching the exported file’s origin with either Project Origin, or the Survey Point . That makes possible to export both IFC models and DWG drawings from the same Archicad project and those files will be fully aligned with each other. There’s no need to apply any workaround to achieve this anymore.
The key benefits of the new Survey Point is that now, it is an integrated solution, we don’t have to rely on a separate GDL object anymore. Once the Survey Point is set, we can fully focus on design.