[ORD] Place North Arrow properly?

I would typically unrotate (align north) the default model view within the sheet dgn and place north arrows there within each named boundary border.

MaryB 

What I do is use an annotation group to automatically place the north points with the correct rotation in the drawing model which then appears in the sheet model. See screen shot below for the settings I use to achieve this via an annotation group which you then apply when you create drawing models and sheets. Note the default angle of zero ie north. You can also have matchlines in that annotation as well which can pick up the sheet name from the sheet index ie previous sheet name..

I agree with Ross for getting the north arrow to point in the right direction.

However, I was frustrated by the fact that the Annotation Group for placing the north arrow in Named Boundaries only appears to have options for positioning the north arrow relative to the alignment and not relative to the sheet. For alignments that wriggle around a lot, this means that the north arrow will be in a different spot on each sheet. When you flip through the PDF, the north arrow will dance around. I prefer to have the north arrow & scale bar in the same spot on every sheet if I can.

To get around this, I have the Annotation Group place the north arrow in a ridiculous location that has near-zero chance of ever actually appearing in the sheet. The screenshot below shows 150% beyond and 300% offset.

Then I wrote a simple macro that goes into every sheet model in the DGN, copies the north arrow cell from Drawing model reference, and places it in the right spot in the sheet model so it's in a consistent spot every time relative to the sheet. The attached macro gets called from a much larger macro that loops through every sheet and does a lot of other stuff too.

Private Sub northarrow()

Dim copytostring As String
Dim copytofound As Boolean
Dim copytox As Double
Dim copytoy As Double

copytostring = "Basis 2C_SN Color"
copytofound = False
copytox = 0
copytoy = 0

Dim scanwhat As New ElementScanCriteria
Dim scantron As ElementEnumerator

scanwhat.ExcludeAllTypes
scanwhat.IncludeType msdElementTypeCellHeader
scanwhat.IncludeType msdElementTypeSharedCell

Set scantron = ActiveModelReference.Scan(scanwhat)

Do While scantron.MoveNext
    With scantron.Current.AsCellElement
        If .Name = copytostring Then
            copytofound = True
            copytox = .Origin.x
            copytoy = .Origin.y
            Exit Do
        End If
    End With
Loop

Dim t As Integer
Dim attachcount As Integer
attachcount = ActiveModelReference.Attachments.Count

Dim copyfromstring As String
Dim copyfromfound As Boolean
Dim copyfromx As Double
Dim copyfromy As Double
Dim o As Point3d
Dim p As Point3d

copyfromstring = "Basis 2C_N Color"
copyfromfound = False
copyfromfound = 0
copyfromy = 0

For t = 1 To attachcount
    Set scantron = ActiveModelReference.Attachments(t).Scan(scanwhat)
    Do While scantron.MoveNext
        With scantron.Current.AsCellElement
            If .Name = copyfromstring Then
                copyfromx = .Origin.x
                copyfromy = .Origin.y
                copyfromfound = True
                ActiveModelReference.CopyElement scantron.Current
                Exit For
            End If
        End With
    Loop
Next t

o.x = 0
o.y = 0
o.z = 0

p.x = copytox - copyfromx
p.y = copytoy - copyfromy
p.z = 0

Set scantron = ActiveModelReference.Scan(scanwhat)

Do While scantron.MoveNext
    With scantron.Current.AsCellElement
        If .Name = copyfromstring Then
            ActiveModelReference.SelectElement scantron.Current
            CadInputQueue.SendKeyin "MOVE ICON "
            CadInputQueue.SendDataPoint o, 1
            CadInputQueue.SendDataPoint p, 1
            CadInputQueue.SendReset
            
            o.x = 10
            o.y = 10
            o.z = 10
            CadInputQueue.SendDataPoint o, 1
            CommandState.StartDefaultCommand
            Exit Do
        End If
    End With
Loop

End Sub

There is probably a better way, but this works great for me!

Thank you.

Ross, that confirms there is a way, but it also validates (to me) that the "simple" solution I used isn't really usable anymore.
Annotation groups will be great, but that's yet another item on the long list of things to make sure we have set up before moving into production.

Matt, your suggestion is probably what I am going with at this moment, although I will end up copying the arrow through into the drawing model - we shouldn't have ANY annotation in the design model.

Steven, thank you for sharing your macro with us. I agree that I prefer my north arrows to be in essentially the same location relative to the sheet, so I see my process to end up similarly to yours.

Hi MaryB

We use the new drawing production workflow, but we've found it's far easier to get consistent north arrow placement and orientation by going through all the drawing models, setting view rotation to unrotated, and placing a north arrow where we want it. Very similar to our pre-Named Boundary workflow.