In this post I am going to cover a couple.of tips that yoi may find helpful when Georeferencing PDF Sheets for site projects
Tip 1
Add a scale bar into your plan view of your project template that is always there when you start a new project. You can delete or hude it if you dont need it, but it means that you can always use the Georeference Vector PDf command to place your sheet(s).
Why do I need to use the Georeference Vector PDF command vs the Place Image command I hear you ask. There are several good reasons for this
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you can only use vector snaps to draw over the PDF when this command was used to place the sheets
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this is actually the fastest method once you have a scale bar to work with- it also lets you crop the sheets down to just the area needed and then on vector extraction you will get bectors only on those cropped areas of the PDF sheets.
A scale bar should be 100 feet either side of 0 and be graduated in 10s with minors at 5s . Draw the scale bar at a start coordinate like 5000, 10000 so your projects are always in a positive coordinate reference frame. Draw it West to East and then use smart copy to cooy the graduations.
Tip 2
We have all done this I am 100% sure - when you select to Georeference a PDF sheet it will draw it i. The middle of the screen area at the zoom scale that you are currently at - if you are uaing the scale bar (above), it is likely that the PDF page just drew on top of it - and while you can likely still see the scale bar and the image the image will often make it hard to see other images that are already placed or CAD linwork that may have been imported.
The tip here is that in the command, pull down the list of sheets ans select None. Now zoom out a bit and move the project data so that it is off the top of the screen so you can’t see it. Now select the sheet that you want to Georefernce again in the list - it should be presented in clear space making it easier to work with.
Tip 3
When georeferencing sheets for site projects, the standard input order for the point pairs is Pixel 1 (in the image) location 1 in the drawing (could be a scale bar location or a cad line location or a point in another PDF sheet that has already been placed. It then asks you for Pixel 2 and Location 2. Especially when you are using a scale bar it is actually quicker to do Pixel 1 and Pixel 2 followed by Location 1 and Location 2. You can do this by just clicking in the dialog fields as you want to select / enter them.
Hopefully these may be helpful.
Using a scalebar also guarantees that you scale the pdf sheets correctly every time.