Can no one explain this issue or suggest a workaround?
To review, perhaps providing better specificity:
1. I have a ground-survey points file using survey feet for the storage and working units. It holds an OpenRoads terrain model that comes, almost completely, from OpenRoads points. It may be worth noting that it had been converted from international feet, but VBA reports that it is indeed using survey feet. (From the beginning, the coordinates were always valid for survey feet; the storage and working units were simply incorrect from the beginning.)
2. I have an air-points file using survey feet for the storage and working units. It holds an OpenRoads terrain model which simulates the location of a power-line transmission tower. (This is by way of obvious example, since it's an obvious feature.)
3. In the ground-survey points file, I attach the air-points file. I create a composite terrain model with the air-points "terrain" being merged onto the ground-survey terrain. Everything coordinate in the composite terrain is scaled to 0.999 998 ft/ft (X, Y, and Z). So a given point at the coordinates 2125247.1514, 1020395.2372, 161.7734 in the unmodified survey terrain is now represented in the composite terrain at the coordinates 2125242.9009, 1020393.1964, 161.7731.
4. For another level of certainty, I deleted the composite terrain. I scaled the air-points file to be 0.999 998 ft/ft (according to the references list, 1:1.000 002, but I entered it as 0.999 998:1), so that now that file is located where the composite terrain places it. I create a new composite terrain model using the same approach as I did before. The new composite terrain model now places the transmission tower at the same location as the transmission tower within the air-points file (scaled as mentioned, at the same coordinates as was seen in the complex model created in observation 3 above).
So: What would cause this to happen, and how can it be fixed?
Edit: I guess the upshot is that the terrain model retains the coordinates that it always had, but it retains them in the original units, no matter the design file units.
