Using AutoCAD Plant 3D in a State Plane

Coordinate Project Environment

This document outlines how to use AutoCAD Plant 3D 2015 with projects where other CAD geometry (including
point clouds and 3D model) are being drawn at State Plane Coordinates and you are required to provide
properly indexed Plant models for coordination purposes.

Author: Joel Harris, Autodesk Enterprise Priority Support Specialist

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Setting the Project Expectations
Plant Coordinate System vs. State Plane Coordinate System
Traditionally, most projects will begin with a design basis communicated to everyone from the surveyor to the
various design teams. Usually the coordinate system that is shown on project documents is by default the
same as that used in the design environment. In most companies’ typical day-to-day work, everything is based
on State Plane Coordinates because it is simpler to bring in aerials, GIS data, adjacent properties, flood zones,
etc. and have all stakeholders share information based upon this shared, well-documented system. By
definition:

The State Plane Coordinate System (SPS or SPCS) is a set of 124 geographic zones or coordinate systems
designed for specific regions of the United States. Each state contains one or more state plane zones, the
boundaries of which usually follow county lines. There are 110 zones in the continental US, with 10 more in
Alaska, 5 in Hawaii, and one for Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands. The system is widely used for geographic
data by state and local governments. Its popularity is due to at least two factors. First, it uses a simple Cartesian
coordinate system to specify locations rather than a more complex spherical coordinate system (the geographic
coordinate system of latitude and longitude). By using the Cartesian coordinate system's simple XY coordinates,
"plane surveying" methods can be used, speeding up and simplifying calculations. Second, the system is highly
accurate within each zone (error less than 1:10,000). Outside a specific state plane zone accuracy rapidly
declines, thus the system is not useful for regional or national mapping. 1

When working in AutoCAD, normally the AutoCAD World Coordinate System (WCS) is set to the state plane for
that region of the State. This works well for situations where the project site is located close enough to the
origin of the SPCS that there no math errors introduced by the computer software’s floating point calculations.
However, if your AutoCAD coordinates start to get out in the millions of units (not uncommon in many SPCS)
the precision of every calculation (characterized by the number of digits to the right of the decimal point) is
sacrificed for the additional digits required to the left of the decimal point. In essence, with floating point
operations, the farther you get from the origin the worse the precision in your calculations. For surveyors
who work with a typical accuracy of 1/10 to 1/100 of a foot in decimal feet, this typically isn’t a concern.
However, when you locate more detailed geometry out at those “extreme” coordinates and try to do double-
precision mathematical operations with them, the errors start to seriously affect how the CAD software
operates.

So what is the answer? There is no simple solution, but the recommendation of this paper is to utilize the
software in way such that productivity is maximized without giving up any precision. This may require some
modifications of typical project workflows, but will yield the best results in the long term. The following
sections outline one workflow which will allow the various project stakeholders to take advantage of the

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benefits of State Plane Coordinate Systems, which this paper will refer to as SPCS, while still using the Plant 3D
software within its optimal operating coordinates.

1. Work with Plant 3D models near to origin of a local “Plant” coordinate system
When Plant 3D is used in a situation where you are modeling at extreme coordinates, certain undesirable
behavior will become evident. This includes, but isn’t limited to, the following:

 Inability to connect piping components

 Inability to grip edit piping
 Piping reported as disconnected in isometric extraction but not in model
 Irregular geometry in orthographic views
 AutoCAD crosshairs may disappear
 Piping components will appear jagged or unrecognizable

To avoid these problems, it is recommended that you choose a point within your Plant 3D model that will serve
as a local origin. Ideally, this point will be an object with a physical representation in the real world, e.g. a
structural column centerline, the corner of a building or foundation. In the example used in this paper, we
will use the center of column “A-2” as our origin. This column is centered on the the east (X) coordinate of the
“A” column line and the north (Y) coordinate of the “2” column line:

Plant Coordinate System Origin

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With respect to the site elevation, or Z coordinate, there is typically no need to shift this local Plant Coordinate
System (PCS) due to the fact that all elevations on earth are typically within a range acceptable to floating point
operations if expressed in typical units of measure (such as meters, feet or inches).

2. Work with Plant 3D models orthogonal to the WCS X&Y axes

Another common practice is to determine the orientation of the majority of the piping and structural steel and
align them parallel to the PCS Cartesian axes (X&Y). By doing this, you maximize the productivity of the
designers as they will be able to utilize the Plant 3D pipe routing and placement interface better. Features
like the routing compass and grip editing will work as designed and you won’t be having to set (and re-set) a
user coordinate system to route your piping. Also, annotation of the isometric and orthographic drawings
will be optimized for better readability, resulting in fewer installation errors. The angle of this new “Plant
North” should be clearly annotated as such on orthographic and isometric drawings, with a clear reference to
the angle between it and Magnetic or True North.

TIP: an alternative to using a rotated User Coordinate System (UCS) for routing
angled pipe is to set the SNAPANG variable in AutoCAD to a specified angle before
routing. This will rotate your crosshairs and the directional constraints of the
Ortho (F8) command.

Setting up the Project

1. Document the local Plant coordinate system
In order to coordinate with the rest of the design team, the piping design team must clearly communicate the
correlation of their PCS to the SPCS. This should be done early in the project prior to starting any 3D models
and will be stated something like:

Plant Origin 0,0 to be located at 10,000,000.00’, 10,000,000.00’ in State Plant Coordinates (XXXX NAD83)

Where XXXX indicates the United States State Plane Coordinates zone number and/or name. Also, remember
to note whether elevations are common or not between PCS and SPCS.

Additionally, if there is to be a Plant North as described in the previous section, clearly reference this angle as
well on any communication regarding project coordinates. All piping drawings will indicate both Plant and
True North to avoid confusion on project documentation.

2. Setup reference models for collaboration

For the purposes of working with various project teams, it will be necessary to setup two different “master”
models for Plant 3D models. One will have all of the Plant 3D models xref’d together at 0,0 and will use a
conventional model hierarchy, a typical example is shown on the next page:

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 Typical Layout and Function of the PCS Plant Master drawing

The second “master” will be for the use of other design teams who are working in SPCS:

Typical Layout and Function of the SPCS Plant Master drawing

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The main difference between the Plant_Master.dwg and Plant_Master_SPCS.dwg is that each can be inserted
at 0,0 within the respective coordinate system:

 Plant_Master is for coordinating with team members working in the PCS

 Plant_Master_SPCS is for coordinating with team members working in the SPCS

So, in our example project we have a civil background drawing (Civil 3D Surface.dwg) where we have located
the PCS with respect to the SPCS:

Civil 3D Surface.dwg Background with Plant Site Origin Located

Looking at the orientation of the site pad above, it is obvious that in this example we are also going to need to
rotate our Plant North with respect to True North. The next figure shows what would be the result if we
inserted our Plant_Master.dwg model at 10,000,000’, 10,000,000’ (SPCS) and rotated -45 degrees CW so that it
is properly situated on the site. However, we don’t want to expect everybody on the team to remember the
transformation coordinates necessary to get this right every time they want to see the plant model. Having
models at non-origin insertion points can be confusing, and may violate federated/collaboration modeling
procedures. Therefore, it is better to create the Plant_Master_SPCS.dwg that will contain xrefs of all of the
plant models inserted at that shifted location and rotated. Then, if someone working in SPCS needs to see your
plant model located on the civil background they can xref Plant_Master_SPCS.dwg in at 0,0 with a rotation of 0
degrees. The result is the same except you only have to type in the coordinates once when creating
Plant_Mater_SPCS.dwg, thus eliminating many opportunities for mistakes.

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 Civil 3D Surface.dwg Background with Plant_Master_SPCS Referenced at 0,0 with a -45 degree Rotation

Now, there may also be times where SPCS models need to be xref’d into a PCS model as a background for
orthographic generation or for reference while modeling.

TIP: To improve performance when updating orthographic views, it is recommended to

minimize the amount of background graphics included in the ortho view. Civil 3D
surfaces and such should be removed if possible to avoid issues with Plant 3D ortho
generation.

In our example, to xref the Civil 3D Surface.dwg (SPCS) into any of our Plant models (PCS) requires reversing the
“shift-and-rotate” transformation that we were doing in Plant_Master_SPCS. Here are the steps:

1. Open a Plant 3D model

2. XREF Civil 3D Surface.dwg at -10,000,000’ , -10,000,000’ with a rotation of 0 degrees
a. This will locate the civil background so that the PCS origin is in the correct location
3. Rotate the civil xref using the ROTATE command, with the base point at 0,0 and an angle of 45 degrees
(CCW)
a. This rotates the civil background around the PCS origin and changes the original XREF insertion
point

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4. Using the PROPERTIES dialog note the insertion X & Y points of the civil XREF are now different. If you
make note of these values (in our example it is shown below) then you can input those values directly
along with the rotation of the XREF when referencing any SPCS model in your PCS Plant models.

Different X & Y Insertion Values for a Rotated SPCS XREF in a PCS Model

Needless to say, if you didn’t need to rotate your north arrow then this entire process is much simpler (and you
can skip steps 3 & 4 above).

Project Documents
When it comes time to produce project (orthographic and isometric) drawings with Plant 3D, you will need to
decide which coordinate system will be referenced by the coordinates on your drawings.

1. Drawings Showing PCS Coordinates

If you are able to produce drawings using the PCS that’s great, but if they are part of construction packages that
include drawings which also reference the SPCS that might get confusing.

One solution is by using a standard note on all PCS-based drawings that give the relationship between PCS and
SPCS. This would be much like the statement referenced earlier in this document:

Note: Drawing Origin 0,0 to be located at 10,000,000.00’, 10,000,000.00’ in State Plant Coordinates (XXXX
NAD83)

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Additionally, you can reference a survey marker or other fixed landmark which represents the Plant origin on
the physical site.

Similarly, if you are using a local Plant North, a note or block indicating the relationship between Plant and True
North should be included on each isometric and orthographic drawing:

Note: Plant North is 45° CW of True North (NNE)

These notes or blocks should be setup in the template drawings so that they automatically appear on the
produced drawings.

2. Isometric Drawings showing SPCS Coordinates

If your project requires that the produced isometric drawings show State Plane coordinates then you will have
to setup Plant 3D to use the offset location and rotation settings as follows:

1. Test the offset coordinates using the Advanced Iso Creation Options > Override location settings:

Setting Isometric Offset Overrides for a Single Isometric Drawing

2. Once you’ve generated an isometric and confirmed that the offset values are correct, set them
permanently within your project using Project Setup > Isometric DWG Settings > Default Settings as shown
in the next figure:

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 Setting Isometric Offset Overrides for an Isometric Style in a Project

There is a separate white paper that covers Isometric Offset Overrides on the “In The Pipes” blog located here:

http://in-the-pipes.typepad.com/in_the_pipes/2015/01/how-to-use-the-isometric-offset-location-and-
rotation-settings-in-autocad-plant-3d.html

And also on the Autodesk Knowledge Network located here:

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad-plant-
3d/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/How-to-use-the-isometric-offset-location-and-rotation-
settings-in-AutoCAD-Plant-3D.html

The next figure shows the same piping exported to an isometric in PCS (above) and in SPCS (below) using the
Isometric Offset Overrides:

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Isometric Generated in PCS (above) and in SPCS (below) using Isometric Offset Overrides

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3. Orthographic Drawings showing SPCS Coordinates
To create an orthographic drawing that displays SPCS coordinates you can utilize a 3D model like the
Plant_Master_SPCS.dwg, which contains xrefs of the necessary models shifted to the SPCS. The emphasis
here is on “necessary” since the orthographic generation algorithms will be attempting to do thousands of
floating point calculations to remove hidden lines and the resulting performance and geometry may suffer as a
result.

An alternative is to create an orthographic drawing from models in the Plant coordinate system and manually
annotate the matchlines and any North and East coordinates rather than using the automated orthographic
annotations.

Summary
With AutoCAD Plant 3D, it is possible to work with projects using State Plane coordinate systems, but it does
require setup and coordination within the design team to understand the workflow changes. If your company
plans on using AutoCAD Plant 3D on projects like this, it is recommended that you run a test project with
example files at extreme coordinates using the procedures shown in this paper. The key to productivity is
knowing how to use tools like AutoCAD (and the verticals, like Plant 3D) within their design parameters to get
the best results.

Sources
1. Wikipedia, “State Plane Coordinate System”

Document Revisons
V1.0 Final Draft (2/17/14) Joel Harris

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