Issue: Geotechnical models with coordinates too far from the origin 

Geometry that is extremely far (millions of units) from the world origin suffers from display and precision problems due to limited precision of floating-point numbers. This may affect the appearance of geometrical objects (rendering may show unwanted artifacts) and consequently the user experience manipulating the model. 

Resolution  

Translating objects to the origin fixes the problem. When importing geometry, select under the importing dialog the option “Adjust base point”. The feature will translate the (minx, miny, minz) coordinates of the bounding box of the model to the origin (0,0,0) fixing the problem.  

 Example

 Assume the following: 

- A floating point number has 5 decimal digits of precision 

- Your model is located at 1.2345e6 units from the origin 

- Your model is 1 unit in length located between 1,234,501.0 and 1,234,502.0. 

To resolve the model correctly, we require at least 7 decimal digits of precision. We cannot resolve it correctly with 5 decimal digits. 1,234,501.0 and 1,234,502.0 get truncated to 1.2345e6 with 5 decimal digits of precision. 

If the model is translated to 0 (the origin) by subtracting 1.2345e6 from the above our model is now relocated to a position between 1.0 and 2.0. We have 4 extra decimal digits following the 1 and 2 because a floating-point number has 5 decimal digits in our example. So, we can represent numbers like 1.0001 and 2.0001 by doing a translation. 

The adjust base point button calculates the bounding box of your model (the min and max x,y,z coordinates) and translates your model so the (minx, miny, minz) of the bounding box is placed at (0,0,0).