Blocks

I am working on a drawing of a boat where the whole deck is made into a block, but only parts of the deck is showing on the drawing.

If I open block editor or explode the block the whole deck becomes visible. How can you this? And is there possible to add parts of the drawing that is hidden visible, in the same block...

Are all layers On and Thawed? Both the normal column in the LAyer Manager and in the VP Freeze column?

conversely, if you put stuff you don't want to see on a layer that is off/freezed, they will not show. Even in a block..I think.

and... a side note....good job in putting your questions in separate threads, that's the way we like it

Tiger: Thanks:D

All the layers is on. Only parts of the block is visible, in my case midtsection on the deck of the ship. If I explode the drawing the whole deck appears.

hmm... This happens to me once in a while and I tend to class it as a "autocad-effing-bug-thing" and explode and then re-block it and copy-paste it to another drawing and all the other stuff that that's standard solutions when AutoCAD is having one of it's "moments"

If you open the actual block-dwg - is everything visible there? How are the layer situation in the block-dwg? Does the block look wrong in a Viewport or in Model Space? Or both?

This is made by purpouse by a design company, probably to save som time?

We have a General arrangement-drawing showing the whole boat, and when the design company shall make drawings of certain rooms/components on the ship, they use this method by making each deck into a block, and then make those parts that they don`t need invisible. We have a lots of drawings that are made like this.

If i explode the block the drawing becomes to big into my frame. I don`t need to show the whole ting, but I want som parts that are made invisible to show on my drawing. I can of course explode it, but then it becomes terrible to work on after words.

(Sorry for my bad english;) Hope you understand)

How do they make some parts of a block invisible?

If not by freezing/off'ing some layers, I have no idea how they would do something like that...

If you don't know, I suggest that you call up somoene in the design company and ask how they do it, then you should be able to reverse it.

Or someone here will understand how that could be accomplished - the Americans should be waking up around now - and will give some more tips.

Or you could, if you are able/allowed, upload one of these blocks so we can take a look at it and perhaps figure out how it's done.

Sorry I can't be of more help

Sounds like XCLIP has been used.

How do they make some parts of a block invisible?

Could be that the objects group 60 DXF code has been set to 1, ie. rendering the entity invisible,

I suppose you could look up the block in the block table definition and break it down into its separate entities, iterate through these and if the group 60 code is 1, change it to zero.

The above could be accomplished through LISP and I'd be happy to help write one for you

Try this:

(defun Elstr (blkN / ent eLst)
 (setq ent (entnext (tblobjname "BLOCK" blkN)))
 (while ent
   (setq eLst (cons (cdar (entget ent)) eLst) ent (entnext ent)))
 (reverse eLst))

(defun c:bvis (/ bNme enLst)
 (if (and (setq bNme (getstring "\nSpecify Block Name to Make Visible:  "))
      (tblsearch "BLOCK" bNme))
   (progn
     (setq enLst (mapcar 'entget (Elstr bNme)))
     (foreach e enLst
   (if (assoc 60 e)
     (entmod (subst (cons 60 0) (assoc 60 e) e))
     (entmod (append e (list (cons 60 0)))))))
   (princ "\n<!> Block Not Found <!>"))
 (command "_regenall")
 (princ))

Type "bvis" to run.