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 January 2009

Editing Existing Attribute Definitions

Let's say you're updating your existing attributed title block or sheet borders and you need to change the prompt or maybe the position of an attribute. Here's what I just passed along to one of my customers and thought you may be interested.

The Block Editor was introduced in A2006 when Dynamic blocks arrived and I have found it to be a more user-friendly method of editing blocks - dynamic or otherwise - than the Refedit command.

Instructions to Modify an Attribute Definition

1. Single click on the attributed block to be modified, then right-click and click Block Editor.

Tip: If you have not opened the Block Editor previously, you may get a dialog box regarding learning more about Dynamic Block and the Editor. You can click No at this time. You can also check the box in the bottom left corner to suppress that dialog box in the future.

2. At this point you have free reign on the block geometry. To modify an attribute definition (the point of this exercise), double-click the desired definition to open the Edit Attribute Definition dialog box and make your edits. In this example, I included a date format in the Prompt to remind the designers of the company standard.

Gold star tip: Right-click in the Default text box of the Edit Attribute Definition dialog box, then click Insert Field. Field text can be used to automatically place the Drawing name, Create Date, Plot Date, etc. in the specified location. See the Main article in Michael's Corner, July 2005 for the use of Fields.

3. After making the necessary modifications to the block, click Close Block Editor (located in the middle of the Editor toolbar) and save your changes. Now when you edit the attributes of the block, you will see your changes.

Top of page

Local Navigation