In the video below we show you how to work with PDF plan sheets that are all rotated at different angles from North and also are drawn at different plot scales and some do not contain a North Arrow at all but have common features that you can use to reorientate a sheet.
In the example, we want to overlay a Site Demolition Plan, a Site Grading Plan, a Site Erosion Control Plan and then potentially a Utility - Sanitary, Utility - Storm and Utility - Water plan as well.
In the example some plans are at 1" = 20’ scale and others are at 1" = 10’ scale
In the example some plans have N pointing to 270 degrees, others have it pointing to ~240 degrees.
The Existing Site Plan contains the control coordinates for the project and they are marked on the plans, so we will use the Multipoint method to georeference that sheet, clicking the vector point in the image and typing in the N,E values in the To field for the Georeferencing. We will use 3 or more coordinates to get a good fit of the PDF Sheet to the Control Coordinates.
Once that sheet is placed, it is now North Up in the plan view, the other sheets to georeference come in square to the plan view screen (N and E axes) and are now at a different orientation to the first sheet that was placed. That can make it a little tricky to create the match point pairs for the next sheet. Also if you did not first set the Scale of each sheet in the PDF Manager Reviewer, then the sheets can also be at a different scale which makes it even harder to find match point pairs. So how do we address that.
The Grading Control Plan is then selected for georeferencing, and when it appears it will be square to the screen, and rotated differently to the first sheet that has been georeferenced. The trick here is to create a second plan view window, and then you can rotate that second plan view to make the unreferenced sheet the same orientation as the first sheet - you can use the CTRL SHIFT Drag a line method of rotating the view o achieve this, or you can use the Rotate Plan View command as an alternative. If you have a N arrow on the plan, then just drag your screen rotation line along the axis of the N arrow from S to N. This will rotate the second plan view so that it is now also N up on screen.
If you do not have a N arrow or any grid lines or grid ticks on the sheet, then you need to use the Rotate Plan View Command to rotate the sheet so that it matches the orientation of the first sheet - the video shows you how to achieve that.
Now that you have the two plan sheets in the same orientation, georeferencing will be much easier because now the scales and orientations of the two sheets should be the same, and finding match points should be easier as a result.
Video Demonstration
Video shows you how to do this on the enclosed example PDF file, and how to check / verify the results of the Georeferencing process.
Original PDF Plans
Combined Civil Sheets.pdf (5.1 MB)