Project North & True North

Drafting conventions dictate that Project North is the top of the view. 
If you need to change Project North, use the Rotate Project North tool. This tool changes Project North for all views in the project. It also preserves the relative position of links. After rotating the project, verify the results in all views.

Note: If the project has worksharing enabled, before rotating the project, ensure that all changes are checked in and that no one is currently accessing the project. After rotating the project, create a new central model.

1. Click Manage tab  Project Location panel Position drop-down Rotate Project North.
2. In the Rotate Project dialog, select the desired option.
3. Click OK.

A message displays to indicate that the project was rotated. It also shows errors, if any. You can export errors to review and correct them.

You can rotate a view to reflect True North (instead of Project North, which is the top of the view). Rotating a view to True North ensures that natural light falls on the correct sides of the building model and that the sun’s path through the sky is accurately simulated.

Open a plan view.
Note: If you need to rotate a 3D view to True North, use the ViewCube.

Change the view orientation to True North, as follows:

Access view properties.

On the Properties palette, for Orientation, select True North, and click Apply.

This change allows you to see accurate shadows in the plan view. 


Rotate the project to True North, as follows:

1. Click Manage tab Project Location panel Position drop-down Rotate True North.
2. Rotate the building model, using one of the following methods:

On the Options Bar, for Angle from Project to True North, enter a value to set the angle of rotation.

For example, if the difference between Project North (the top of the view) and True North is 45 degrees, enter 45. The model rotates in the view to the specified angle.


Click in the view to rotate the model to True North graphically (similar to using the Rotate tool).