Dwg global coords

Morning, All

OK. I’ve been messing about with geolocation and it seems a little vague, tbh. Is there any way of importing a coordinated dwg drawing to Sketchup and it retaining the coord system and accurately placing it on the globe when you geolocate?

I’ve messed about with a plan I have that is in a local grid and a global grid and it puts the correct shift away from perpendicular on when the global model is imported, so it knows there is a difference…

Coming under the Trimble banner I’m surprised this doesn’t appear as an easy feature. I’ve used their EDMs for years and would expect this to all work together.

As ever, I appreciate the wisdom of the gurus.

Cheers

Nick

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You can check the “preserve original coordinates” box when importing a DWG but you will then run into great problems. Most 3D modelling applications do not work well with objects placed very far from the model origin, and you will experience bad clipping and weird screen artifacts, and possibly crashes. Another thing is that digital DWG maps generally use a different system of coordinates than the global lat/long system in the geolocation system used in SketchUp and the likes of Google maps.

The safest way of working is to place the imported DWG at or near the model origin, preferably with a known point at the exact origin which can then be used to place the model back into the CAD if needed.

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