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True North vs Project North - Revit


Last modified on: 29 April 2020

With Project North and True North is becomes possible to draw the building orthogonale and yet still have it positioned correctly (north-bound) in the environment/surroundings.

In the example here we use an AutoCAD drawing that is imported into Revit, to show the difference between Project North and True North. The image shows the plan that has been imported with the "Import CAD" function.


As you can see the building in the middle of the drawing is orientated orthogonale. Therefor it is nicely aligned both horizontal and vertical. This makes it easy to work on the building. Only now we take a look at the North-arrow.


As can bee seen, the North-arrow does not point directly upward(vertical). When a situational plan has to be created one expects all things shown, are shown Northbound.

You could rotate the entire model to get this right, only you would not be able to modify the building orthogonale like in the first situation. And the plot may not be as useful as before. To make the situational plan Northbound we will have to make use of Revit "Project North" and "True North" functions.

These functions provide us with the option to choose how a building is presented on a floorplan.

With "True North" the drawing will be presented rotated to that the North-arrow will be vertical.

In each view created in Revit, we have the parameter "Orientation" available. The value of this parameter is either "Project North" or "True North". This parameter can be found in the type properties of the View:


By default each view is set to "Project North". Now we are going to created a 'True North' oriented view. To do this we select an existing view, duplicate this view and rename it to Situational Plan. Next we change the "Orientation" parameter to "True North". Now we can start modifying the view. To do this we must go to the Manage Tab --> Project Location --> Position --> Rotate True North.

Once selected we get the standard rotation tool. All we have to do is first select the middle of the North-arrow and rotate this until it is vertical:


This is how the plan will look after it is rotated to "True North". A Project can only have one "True North". Therefor other views that have the parameter "orientation" set to"True North" also, will show the same rotation.


What important is to know is that we have only rotated a view and not the buildingmodel itself. When we open another view the building will still be presented orthogonale.


Bron: http://www.revitzone.com/revit-fundamentals/114-project-north-versus-true-north