Georeference a Shapefile?

[LisaD]

A coworker gave me 2 shapefiles which he had exported from Surpac.  The shapefiles are not in a real world coordinate system but he would like me to create a map of boreholes in reference to a contour map from Surpac.  If I do that the map still won't be georeferenced and the map won't be very useful.  I have the USA topo from ESRI and wondered if I could somehow match the topo (just lines) exported from Surpac with the topo from ESRI so I could give the points real world coordinates?

[JonathanQuinn]

I'd suggest you look into this KB article to create a custom projection file for your data, (this process will work for any data, not just CAD as the title implies).  Use the topo map as a reference to line up your shapefile data.

[LisaD]

This may not work with the topo file.  When I did the first step (adding in the X direction) my topo is now only showing a line centered around Africa and the United States does not appear.