AutoCAD 2015 - Coordinate System

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Zen Admin
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by Geoff Woodhead

We all know that one of the biggest problems when working on a drawing that originated from a source other than yourself is the Coordinate System, with this problem being exasperated on multi disciplinary projects.

When establishing the rotation and displacement value of a coordinate system you must first establish whether a User or World Coordinate System is being used. This is easy if the View Cube is turned on but most users will turn this off to reduce clutter, this left me having to run the UCS command to interrogate the drawing.

Not anymore! If you take a look at the UCS Icon in the bottom left of your drawing area you should see a line travelling vertically with the letter Y next to it and a line travelling horizontally with the letter X next to it. Can you see a small square (see fig. 1 below) surrounding the intersection point of the X and Y axis? I had always thought that someone at Autodesk thought it looked better that way but this is not the case. The presence of the square (see fig. 1 below) indicates that you are using the World Coordinate System whereas the absence of the square (see fig. 2 below) indicates that you are using a User Coordinate System.

Well that’s one less thing for me to interrogate!

Fig.1

World Coordinate System

Fig.2

User Coordinate System

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