Block help

[poly4life]

Hey all,

First time poster, long time reader. Anyways, I have a background in 3ds Max and I am teaching myself AutoCAD 2007. As of right now I am only dealing with the 2D side of AutoCAD creating design layouts for AV intergration. Things are going well but I have run into 2 snags.

 

1. After I have made a block I can not seem to edit the name of the block or delete any existing blocks from the block list. Can someone please clue me in as to how I can change a blocks name or delete the block from the block list in the file?

 

2. I would like to set up file folders on our server to hold all of the blocks instead of just having them stored in a single drawing templete that needs to constantly be updated. How do I get the blocks I create in a drawings stored in an outside folder?

 

Thanks in Advance!

[Guest LElkins]

Hey all,

First time poster, long time reader. Anyways, I have a background in 3ds Max and I am teaching myself AutoCAD 2007. As of right now I am only dealing with the 2D side of AutoCAD creating design layouts for AV intergration. Things are going well but I have run into 2 snags.

 

1. After I have made a block I can not seem to edit the name of the block or delete any existing blocks from the block list. Can someone please clue me in as to how I can change a blocks name or delete the block from the block list in the file?

 

2. I would like to set up file folders on our server to hold all of the blocks instead of just having them stored in a single drawing templete that needs to constantly be updated. How do I get the blocks I create in a drawings stored in an outside folder?

 

Thanks in Advance!

 

OK. For renaming the blocks, type RENAME and then just following the interface.

If you have deleted all instances of a block and want to remove the definition from the drawing, use the PURGE command, then select it in the list and click the purge button.

 

And for getting the blocks into seperate files, look into the WBLOCK command.

 

 

Sorry this is brief, but it should give you an idea of where to look.

 

Post back if you have any more problems.

 

Cheers

[poly4life]

Thank you, thank you. You have no idea how long I have been searching for the answer myself. Thanks for making my day!

[Guest LElkins]

You are welcome.

Don't hesitate to post back if you have any more problems.

[krisby]

This is my first time post as well, only just started using the BLOCK command as we figured it would save a bit of time when importing data in our GIS.

 

However I have found a little snag and am not sure how to solve it. As Poly4life requested I too need to delete Block attribute.

 

We do maps of orchards and farms, and an example I'm dealing with is a kiwifruit orchard, it has blocks (i.e blocks of fruit not autocad blocks), each block had a separate ID in our database, and we normally enter in manually the blockID into our GIS for that particular block, however when I discovered this BLOCK command I tried it out, sure enough it worked when I entered the BlockID against the block, and same for the next block.

 

However, the orchard has an kiwifruit identifier number, which I thought we might also be able to assign, so I clicked on one of the blocks and assigned the number to it, sure enough the number shows up as the Name under autocad properties, but I wanted to revert back to the BlockID, but I couldn't. It would seem that both numbers are now tagged to this block, but the kiwifruit id number is the one on top, but I want the BlockID on top. I tried deleting the kiwifruit ID to no avail, a rename just meant it changed the name but did not remove it and it was a nested item under PURGE so I cannot remove it, also because its in use.

 

The problem I can see is if someone enters a wrong BlockID it will be very difficult to change to the correct ID, but I assume there must be a simpler way of editing it.

 

Is it also possible to select the whole drawing to assign another ID? i.e. we want the blocks to have the individual BlockIDs, but if we could have a 2nd ID tagged to everything with the kiwifruit ID, but obviously when I click on the block I want to see the blockID not the kiwifruit ID.

 

Is that too complicated? Seems easy enough to me but depends whether there is functionality of course.

[soleary]

However, the orchard has an kiwifruit identifier number, which I thought we might also be able to assign, so I clicked on one of the blocks and assigned the number to it, sure enough the number shows up as the Name under autocad properties, but I wanted to revert back to the BlockID, but I couldn't. It would seem that both numbers are now tagged to this block, but the kiwifruit id number is the one on top, but I want the BlockID on top. I tried deleting the kiwifruit ID to no avail, a rename just meant it changed the name but did not remove it and it was a nested item under PURGE so I cannot remove it, also because its in use.

Do you mean you created these tags using the attribute definition command and these are now AutoCAD blocks? If so, you can edit the position of the tags (attributes) by using the bedit command. Type bedit, select the block name. This will open the block editor and from there you can move your tags around. When done it will ask you to you want to save the block. Choose yes. Then you need to type ATTSYNC, hit enter twice and select your block on screen. Your attributes should update.

 

Please post if you created AutoCAD blocks with attributes as it affects the rest of your questions....

[krisby]

Do you mean you created these tags using the attribute definition command and these are now AutoCAD blocks? If so, you can edit the position of the tags (attributes) by using the bedit command. Type bedit, select the block name. This will open the block editor and from there you can move your tags around. When done it will ask you to you want to save the block. Choose yes. Then you need to type ATTSYNC, hit enter twice and select your block on screen. Your attributes should update.

 

Please post if you created AutoCAD blocks with attributes as it affects the rest of your questions....

 

Thanks for the reply.

 

No, I used the BLOCK command, I don't want the attribute visible, I just want it tagged to the block so we can then extract that field in our GIS, which, as I said did work, but of course now the wrong ID number is the one in the field and I can't work out how to change it.

 

I tried ATTDEF but it didn't seem to provide what I needed, but BLOCK does, and if I can just find how to remove the BLOCK name/attribute from the list or atleast bring the correct one to the top it will be absolutely fantastic. Autocad is afterall just a database, so like with a lot of software, there is likely a way once you know how but its not common knowledge.

[soleary]

Thanks for the reply.

 

No, I used the BLOCK command, I don't want the attribute visible, I just want it tagged to the block so we can then extract that field in our GIS, which, as I said did work, but of course now the wrong ID number is the one in the field and I can't work out how to change it.

 

I tried ATTDEF but it didn't seem to provide what I needed, but BLOCK does, and if I can just find how to remove the BLOCK name/attribute from the list or atleast bring the correct one to the top it will be absolutely fantastic. Autocad is afterall just a database, so like with a lot of software, there is likely a way once you know how but its not common knowledge.

I'm pretty sure you can do what you want using blocks and attributes. Can you post a drawing (or sample) and I'll have a look. If it's done correctly you can use bedit to bring the tag to the top and also you change the attributes quite easily.

[krisby]

I'm pretty sure you can do what you want using blocks and attributes. Can you post a drawing (or sample) and I'll have a look. If it's done correctly you can use bedit to bring the tag to the top and also you change the attributes quite easily.

 

Right, I've seen how the ATTDEF could work for me, if only I could make it invisible, when I created it I selected invisible but its still visible on screen, I only want to apply the ID number to the block for extraction in the GIS, it doesn't need to be (or rather for my purposes can't be visible), but I can see the attributes by looking at the autocad properties in the text pane.

 

In fact, no, ATTDEF only appears to be a label that is locked to a point on the block, but is not actually embedded in the block, so when I bring through the block into the GIS the ATTDEF tags are not associated with it, the ATTDEF labels appear to be a separate entity and hold the information I need.

 

So it would seem that BLOCK is the way to go as it associates the text I need with the block, but as I say, its trying to change the layer the label is on, as the first label I attached is correct, but if I need to delete it it won't let me. However, I think I could make it work simply by editing the layer to what I want. I do notice though that the BLOCK command covers the whole drawing, so say I have 3 blocks, each one needs an ID, and when I select one block, all 3 IDs are visible, which isn't too much of a drama I guess, it would just be great if it was associated with that one block, not across the whole drawing.

 

So whilst I haven't found a way of deleting the unwanted block data, I can work with it, an of course the back door way of getting rid of it is to recreate the boundary and assign the new blockID to it, then delete the old layer with the old/wrong ID on it, which I guess would allow me then to purge the data.

 

Thank for the help, got me thinking.