Michael’s Corner

Michael's Corner is a monthly publication written by Michael E. Beall, Autodesk Authorized Author and peripatetic AutoCAD trainer. Michael travels all over the USA, bringing his fantastic experience and great understanding of AutoCAD to his clients. Michael's Corner brings together many of the tips, tricks and methods developed during these training sessions for the benefit of all users.

Michael's Corner provides something for every AutoCAD user. Every month, a number of articles cover a wide range of topics, suitable for users at all levels, including "The Basics" for those just starting out. Essentially, the aim of Michael's Corner is to help all AutoCAD users work smarter and faster.

This month…

From the Vault

Originally published September 2013

Alternatives for Global Attribute Editing

If you need to update the same attribute on a lot of layout tabs with the same attributed title block, I have a couple ideas that may expedite that process.

PREREQUISITE

The first thing you'll need to know is the attribute Tag name. When you double-click on an attributed block, the Enhanced Attribute Editor opens, as shown in the first illustration.

OPTION A: Find and Replace

If you have the same attribute Tag on all layout tabs—such as the first three shown in the figure—you can use the Find command to find and replace all identical tags, regardless of the page size of the title block.

How to Use Find to Replace Attribute Values

1. On the Annotate tab, click in the edit field, then enter the text string of the current value of the attribute tag, then press [Enter].

   

2. To replace all instances of that string across all layout tabs, click Replace All. To change the text on the current layout tab only, click Replace.

   

The Find command works great if the attribute tag string is to have the identical replacement for every instance of that tag throughout the drawing. However, if the same string is used to represent more than one attribute tag—as in the case of the XXX Address XXX text in the figure, another solution is required.

OPTION B: Global Attribute Edit

The Global Attribute Editing feature (also covered in a different application in Michael's Corner March 2008), is a Command line-only command—GATTE—and is the optimum solution for updating unique attribute tags across the entire drawing. In our current illustration, we need to populate multiple layout tabs containing the same attributed title block with three unique address lines, i.e. ADDRESS_LINE_1, ADDRESS_LINE_2, and ADDRESS_LINE_3.

How to Use GATTE to Replace Attribute Values

1. At the command line, enter GATTE and you will see the following prompt:

   Select block or attribute [Block name]:

2. In the drawing, click on the attribute to be replaced. In the current illustration, I clicked on the first 'XXX Address XXX' and the following information is displayed on the prompt line.

   Block: 18x24   Attribute tag: ADDRESS_LINE_1
   Enter new text:

   Note: If you can't see the information you need, hit F2 to open the Text Window.

3. At this point, you can enter the desired text, then press [Enter] and you see the following:

   Enter new text: 4127 Reedhurst Ave.
   Number of inserts in drawing = 2  Process all of them? [Yes/No] <Yes>:
   Please wait...
   2 attributes changed.

When using GATTE, although there three instances of the text string 'XXX Address XXX' on each of the two layout tabs using the same title block, only the tag ADDRESS_LINE_1 was modified (on each of the two layout tabs).

Bottom Line

Use the right tool for the job. Many title blocks use the same text string as a ‘place holder’ for the tag, so GATTE will be the optimum solution. Otherwise, just use the Find command. The good news is, both of these solutions are applied on multiple layout tabs; something that is not intuitively obvious.

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