I have a drawing from Civil3D, a .dwg, and I have a land xml that was created from that data set by original drawing creators. Also, there was a .dgn created from the same .dwg file, which has some visible contours shown in .dgn. When I view .dgn and then create a terrain model with xml, to verify contours are correct, the terrain model contours and contours displayed in the .dgn, are consistently off horizontally. Seems to be an international foot to US Survey foot difference, since horizontal is off by about 3 ft everywhere. Cannot seem to be able to get the contours to overlap original drawing. Please, help!
See picture: Yellow are the terrain model and white are the dgn contours.
Yes as Joshua and caddcop indicate, best to know the data within the DWG if at all possible. (What state plane, datum, etc.) Using the Geographic tool (simply hit F4 search for "coordinate system" tool). will give you the option to assign a state plane to the file prior to attaching the DWG. Notice the list of state plane options have Foot/Meters, etc, so choose wisely. Once those are the same, your problem should be solved. If you don't know how the DWG was created (usually a data set from USGS or similar online source), most cases you'll be able to narrow down the choices based on the project state plane location.
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I appreciate the response, Shawn.
Since I was starting off with a dgn that was exported from C3d, I did not set the coordinate system correctly once I selected Washington South USSF. I'm still trying to understand where exactly I went wrong.
Ultimately, it was a combination of the civil files set in "feet" under drawing utilities units, and me not selecting the correct option once selecting the correct geographical coordinate system. ORD notices that the data is in feet, but you have selected us survey feet, and it asks you what you want to do. I believe I was selecting the wrong option and because I did that, everything I did from then on was going to result in incorrectly projected data.
Thanks!