In many cases is of big importance to know the actual orientation of our project. Projects like solar panel parks or bio-climatic designings are sensitive in terms of siting. Therefore, to be able to pinpoint the direction of the North in our drawing can be crucial.
North’s actual direction may not agree to the north is pointed out by the Autocad’s compass, but it can differ from it by a significant angle which depends on the coordination system we are using.
The actual orientation of our project can easily be found through Plex.Earth 4.
Simply, use the “Basic Image” command, in the Quick Google Earth section of Plex.Earth’s ribbon.
After that, you will take a one-tile image in your drawing which includes Google Earth’s compass which shows the actual orientation in your drawing.
As you can see, Autocad’s compass significantly differs from the one on the imported image.
If just to spot the right orientation is not enough for you but you need something more accurate, Plex.Earth can still be useful to you.
Open Google Earth and draw a vertical path following the North-South direction of Google Earth’s compass, using two points. On the “places tab” in Google Earth, right-click on it and save it as a .KML file.
Go to the .KML object you created and open it with notepad. Find the coordinates in the file.
Find the Longitude coordinate of each point of the path (the first out of the three for each point). Copy one of them and paste it to the other (it doesn’t matter which of them you will choose) and save the file. This process will secure that your line is completely vertical and will eliminate inaccuracies (you can see it for yourself by reopening the .KML file in Google Earth, but it is not necessary).
Only one thing to go: Go to your Plex.Earth ribbon, and choose the “Import KML” command. Import the .KML you have created in your drawing. Now you have a line precisely showing the North-South direction.
You can use it as a reporting line to accurately show the orientation of your project.