Scaling of Reference Attachments When Attached Changes Itself

Couple of things to look out for

Autocad files  often are export wrongly  especially the units..

also when you attach a dgn reference  read every part of the dialog box 

sometime it uses custom scale from annotation scale or drg scale thinks your using it for detailing ..

or the scale you last attached a ref at .. I see this too but not exaclty sure where or why  just read everything dont just ref at attach and enter and data point...

also check the geographic datum in the active file and independantly open the ref and check if it has a geographic coordinate system attached

if they dont have the same geo coord you need to reproject the reference file..

or you need to assign a geo graphic coordinate system but you need to know what it should be in each ( get that info from  the originator.. )

Yeah, I typically check all of those parameters before attaching. When the ref dgn goes off into its own space I look at the scale of the attachment and it has changed itself.

the 1: 3.208 thing is a  meters to feet  ratio  so  your  ref file  must be in meters and your active file is in  feet or have I got that backwards?

Next time it happens  go and  open the naughty ref file  in an other session and examine the units see if the  match  what you expect.

The other times if they came form autocad  is the  naughty acaders dont draw  civil stuff 1:1    so the scale the world down to fit a sheet so nothing is geographically correct anymore..

So if they want it 1:10 the scale it all down and you attach as a ref  file and its never going to land right 

other times  its that your in meters the acad  have drawn in mm so its a 1:1000 times wrong  or they drew in cm so you 1:100  wrong with refs

I get this all the time from acad especailly if the  just use unitless and treat everything as mm  so a 1 m line in 1000 units long ... I often get the  1:603  which is the inches to meters  issue...

Yeah, I know that the conversion is metric/English. But, the units in the ref file, as well as the file I am attaching to, are US Survey Ft. I have no idea why it "remembers" the metric component, or why it changes itself even though when I attach it is clearly at the scale (usually 1:1) specified in the ref dialog.

I guess I chalk it up to a bug.

open the auto cad converted files independantly  one at a time  check the  units and  measure some know distances  if its wrong or strange  its because the  original autocad files  we  unitless and mstn has tried to compensate and tell the file it is either m or  feet...  you should now change the  units in  settingd>design file> units

and change to real units it should have been in acad..., oops check coords too before you change things assign coordinate system too... ( always a good thing in survey work)..

 Do this to both files especially acad export dgns before yopu ref attach them..

Now  go back to  your original active file check your design units , and  geo coord system is set.. now ref attach the other exported files.. both should work fine now..

I get this even with acad files not exported just ref attached  they are  unitless  but drawn as if in mm so they are 1000x too big  or too small and dont geo ref properly into my default meters file I have to play with the ref scaling  until it works also the 603  one is when the acader has thought it was unitless but was  actually in USA inches  a real pain in the Butt.. but acad  is not smart enough to pick this up until mstn use it as refs...

Not much else you can do.. what  I do is get it right with  ref scale and rotation then fence file to new file and wow its now corrected then blow away the original to superseded folder for QA ref purpose  or just  kill it... and use my  Fence filed version instead then add  our colour table attached instead of the the acad one...