I received this question from Erik about creating a Northing & Easting block with fields. Here is his question:

I find your post extremely helpful but I do have a question. I need my northing and easting to read a custom ucs (not world). Example, I’m giving a contractor a benchmark to work from which in world ucs is: N: 12213.19 E:-33516.2 but for ease we are setting that coordinate as N:0.00 and E:0.00 by making a custom layout ucs.
When I test the block it will only read out and display the world ucs even when I’ve set it to my custom ucs. Any thoughts? I want to place this block and have it read my custom ucs coordinate system instead of the world…

Great question Erik! Read more »

My friend and coworker @deanhuber emailed me with this tip today: Read more »

The UCS is a powerful tool in AutoCAD that allows you to control the drawing plane. It is very important to learn how to use this tool. It can be used for good and evil (for example, in a civil drawing, it is important to keep the UCS in the World Coordinate System otherwise the drawing may not line up with XREFs correctly). Every AutoCAD drafter should learn to use and manipulate the UCS correctly.

Here I will show you a couple of secret options for manipulating the UCS. Read more »