First, a bit of background information...

There are two origins (0,0 locations) in every Vectorworks file, an internal (or "Vectorworks") origin and a User Origin.


The Internal Origin is a set point indicated by a light blue crosshair:


We have found that some users import the base drawing they will be working with, then they move their 0,0 point by moving the User Origin to a particular location on the base drawings. 


Please, don’t do that. Instead, move your drawn objects/data/base information to the Internal Origin. This is why...


The Vectorworks Origin is a single fixed point in the file. Vectorworks itself and most Vectorworks plug-ins use the Internal Origin and not the User Origin when doing their calculations. It is a Best Practice to draw near the Internal Origin. If you draw far from Internal Origin (especially further than 7,500m from it) strange things will occur in your file. (This behaviour is not unique to Vectorworks. All 3D/BIM/CAD applications experience this, as you can read more about in this article.)


How to find Internal Origin in your file

  1. Go to the Tools menu > Origin > Locate Internal Origin
  2. What you should see is a light blue crosshair in your drawing space, like the example above.
  3. If you do not see the crosshair, zoom out. It's possible that you might have accidentally or unintentionally moved your User Origin so far from Internal Origin that you need to get a wider view of your drawing area.
  4. If you still can’t see the blue crosshair, it is possible that the Internal Origin is hidden under an object with a fill. To check for this possibility, navigate to a new or blank layer, set the Layer Options to "Active only" and check to see where the Internal Origin is.


How to fix your file if you find that you have been drawing very far from Internal Origin

Because you may only be discovering a huge distance from Internal Origin after you have already drawn many objects, on various Layers and in various Classes, the best idea is to correct these all at the same time.

  1. Before you proceed with this fix, save the current view's Layer & Class visibilities so you can return to this arrangement afterwards. Note that you should not save the View Orientation, Zoom & Pan, Page Location, etc.
  2. Turn on the visibility of ALL your Classes and set the Layer Options to Show/Snap/Modify.
  3. Turn on the visibility of ALL your Layers and set the Class options to Show/Snap/Modify.
  4. Make sure you have zoomed out just enough to see all of your drawn objects and the blue crosshair of Intern Origin.
  5. Select All (Cmd-A on a Mac, Ctrl-A on a Windows computer).
  6. Drag all of your drawn objects from a point of your choosing to snap directly onto the centre of the blue crosshair at Internal Origin.
  7. Deselect all of your objects. Your drawing has now been moved.
  8. (If you had previously created viewports looking at particular areas of your Design Layers, you may need to adjust the viewport crops to re-target the viewports.)


How to Reset the User Origin

To relocate the User Origin so that it is centred on Intern Origin, simply go to the Tools menu > Origin > Set User Origin to Internal Origin



You may also want to "Disable dragging for the User Origin button" as seen in the screenshot above. This prevents accidentally relocating the User Origin via the User Origin Button.


Finally, go to the saved view you created above and your Layer and Class visibilities should re-set to the arrangement you had previously.


It is also worth mentioning here... Please do NOT move the page boundary that is seen on the Design Layer. (Some users unwisely move the page boundary in order to print various objects shown on their Design Layers.) The page boundary starts centred at Internal Origin. If you move the page boundary, then keep drawing, then move the page boundary again, and so on, eventually you will easily end up drawing very far from Internal Origin. You will then experience the drawing oddities mentioned previously.

Instead of moving the page boundary to print some of your design, simply use Viewports to send views of those objects to Sheet Layers and print from there. Viewports are far more versatile and functional than printing directly from Design Layers.