Is this self serving and biased – yes and no. It’ll save everyone a lot of time, money and pain – especially for larger projects. No having to redesign and shift gosh-knows how many things to make it all fit again because the survey was different to the old design plans? That’s always a better experience for everyone.

Starting with a truncated survey will reduce coordination issues, graphic errors and more things than I will probably understand at this point in my career. Ask your favourite surveyor about how to go about this (Hi!)

Link your survey *.dwg instead of inserting it. It will be less heavy on your project file, you can refresh and relink any later iterations or revisions and you can’t mess with it too much by accident.

Link that survey to AHD (or whatever relevant level it is meant to be associated with). Your surveyors may have given you delicious 3D points to snap to – make them land on the correct height.

Pin it! But guess what, if you’re on truncated coordinates and you accidentally move your survey, you can remove and re-link it back to the correct spot. Isn’t that beautiful?

Disable the “Select Links” option. Because sometimes you’re going to forgot to pin it. Safety first!

Disable the “Select Pinned” – SUPER safety first. Am I outing myself as a clumsy modeller? I am Schrodinger’s clutz – we won’t know if I never give myself the chance to find out.  You can enable it when you need it and disable when you’re done.

Know your North – AND the coordinate system it is based off – and notate it somewhere! MGA 56, GDA 2020, grid north, etc – It should be on your survey but put it in your model information sheets too. It might not mean much to you at the time, but links get lost, models get passed on, origin information falls through the cracks. Someone might need that information later. At CMS we model to True/MGA north as our Project North. Mo’ norths mo’ problems (in rotation). It is hard for us to predict which north another software may pick, so we like to eliminate the risk. Otherwise, keep a note of your true north and project north rotation for coordination purposes

Automate your surface. Did you know that your surveyer is able to provide you with a CSV or points file for your topography? Ditch the tedious manual input. This works signficantly better on a truncated coordinate system – the benefits keep stacking!

Get to know your surveyor’s layer system. If they cruelly numbered them with no descriptions, ask for a legend/key. You can use this to isolate different linework to make specific information easier to read. If they don’t use any sort of layer system – consider it for next time. It’s definitely has its perks.

Override that linework if it doesn’t work for you in Visibility Graphics. AutoCAD users often work off black backgrounds and subsequently use light coloured linework. You can also change the colours in a copy of the original if you have AutoCAD yourself. If you don’t have access to AutoCAD, be  really nice to your surveyor they might change it for you.

In relation to both #9 and #10, Revit 2024/2025 can generate your toposolid from your CAD survey if it has 3D linework. Getting to know your survey layers will help you isolate and pick the best layers to generate that terrain. Common layer names might be: Contours, Majors/Minors, Triangles, TIN – if in doubt, ask the surveyor!

Dive into your survey model and check out the elements used to model. Revit insists on walls having at least 2 sides, is one side verfied and one not? This can occur when areas are inaccessible. The nominated wall thickness may not reflect what is actually there. Check if the model element has any clues – eg. At CMS Surveyors we use separate “Unconfirmed”  and “Survey” materials and family naming conventions.

Check out the worksets and how the model has been organised. This will help inform how you integrate the model with your own workflows. Heck, if you’re savvy, ask your surveyors if they can better accomodate your workflows with desired worksets, naming conventions and family usage. More often than not, if it’s not too arduous, they’ll be happy to help out – at least we are! Just saying…!

There is a benefit to sticking with the same surveyor throughout the life of a project. It’ll eliminate conflicting geospatial information and they will undoubtedly have extra information about your site that was not needed for the initial deliverables that can be used later to speed up the process. Get those boundary definitions, as-build floorplans, visual impact studies, set-outs and tenancies all on the same page – metaphorically. We do all this and more at CMS, and we love being part of your project from inception right through to the end.