The AutoCAD Deep Dive series is back! With its popularity and how much fun I had with our series on AutoCAD Layers, I’m back with another multi-part series on key AutoCAD functionality, this time BLOCKS.
Image Credit: A. Drauglis – Flickr
Since its October and Halloween is close, I quote everyone’s favorite Halloween doll, Chucky…
“Let me put it this way. If this were a movie, it would take three or four sequels to do it justice.”
and that’s exactly what it is going to take with Blocks, a series of posts, as there is so much built in and I don’t want to overwhelm anyone in any particular post.
What are blocks?
A block is a way of collecting and grouping objects into a single entity. As a single entity it becomes easier to select, to manipulate (move, copy, rotate, etc), and easier to share across multiple drawings. Using blocks leads to consistency and standardization as you and your company use the same symbol in all drawings.
When you create a block, the block definition is added to the drawing database. Each time you insert the block an instance of the block definition is added to the drawing. As each instance is referencing the definition it means a lighter-footprint in the drawing, making AutoCAD work less. If you change the definition, all instances update automatically
Series Table of Contents
- Creating Blocks
- WBLOCK & Reusing Blocks
- Reusing Blocks Part 2 (Tool Palettes, Design Center)
- Blocks & Attributes
- Modifying Blocks
- Annotative Blocks
- Extracting Block / Attribute Information
- Dynamic Blocks Part 1: Parameters & Constraints
- Dynamic Blocks Part 2: Parameters & Actions
- Dynamic Blocks Part 3: Visibility
- Converting Xrefs to Blocks
It’ll be important to check back often so you don’t miss a post, also your comments are greatly appreciated as you can use them to ask questions or to point out areas I should expand on or that I missed.
