OTRT Posted March 25, 2012 Posted March 25, 2012 Hi - new guy here. Is there a way to remove blocks from a drawing without having to explode or burst? I'm trying to clean up backgrounds for a hospital and every drawing is driving me mad! After I explode them, all kinds of new entities appear making the problem worse. There has to be a better way. I've tried bursting, but - same effect. On another note, my office is trying to move us to Revit, which appears to have a ridiculously steep learning curve... Thanks! Quote
dbroada Posted March 26, 2012 Posted March 26, 2012 this should really be in a thread of its own rather than added to a not entierly relevant one. But to answer you with a question, why are you not just erasing the blocks you don't want? Quote
SLW210 Posted March 26, 2012 Posted March 26, 2012 Moved to a seperate thread. I agree, what not just select and delete? Quote
OTRT Posted March 26, 2012 Author Posted March 26, 2012 I'm new to this forum thing. I'll start a new thread next time - thanks for moving this! Sorry, I left out 'nested'. How can I delete nested blocks without exploding or bursting all of the 'parent' blocks? Quote
dbroada Posted March 26, 2012 Posted March 26, 2012 I don't know about MEP but you can edit in AutoCAD with either REFEDIT or (my preference) BEDIT Quote
RobDraw Posted March 27, 2012 Posted March 27, 2012 I think what you have there is a .dwg that had XREFs with an XCLIP applied. They were bound before being sent to you. You may want to look into something like cookie cutter trim. There are a few lisps around that supposedly do a good job with that. Quote
OTRT Posted March 28, 2012 Author Posted March 28, 2012 Never got into lisp or scripts. I shouldn't have to know how to program in order to get the most out of a piece of software. I'm not knocking those who do, I'm just saying I've got better things to do with my limited time. ;-) My company wants to move to Revit, which stykeface has done a fantastic job of describing. I'm trying to talk them out of it based on what I'm learning about it. It's the wrong tool for the job. Anyway, I came across something called AutoPREP which I may give a try. It promises quite a bit, but what the heck - it's free to try. I'll let you know how it goes! Quote
RobDraw Posted March 28, 2012 Posted March 28, 2012 Never got into lisp or scripts. I shouldn't have to know how to program in order to get the most out of a piece of software. I'm not knocking those who do, I'm just saying I've got better things to do with my limited time. ;-) My company wants to move to Revit, which stykeface has done a fantastic job of describing. I'm trying to talk them out of it based on what I'm learning about it. It's the wrong tool for the job. Anyway, I came across something called AutoPREP which I may give a try. It promises quite a bit, but what the heck - it's free to try. I'll let you know how it goes! Who brought negative Nancy to the party? I was offering possible solutions given the limited information that was in your post. You don't have to know how to program to USE lisp. There are tons of them out there all ready for you to use. Think of them as tools that you can get for free that will help you get your job done faster. Let me try this again. A possible reason for things showing up after an explode or burst has to do with the what I stated above. AutoCAD has a tool called cookie cutter trim that can help in this situation, look into it. Here I'll help you http://lmgtfy.com/?q=cookie+cutter+trim. Using this may help you get to the point where you can delete those pesky blocks, easily. There are also a number of lisp routines that have been created that may be more suitable for your needs. You need to decide that. Quote
OTRT Posted July 12, 2012 Author Posted July 12, 2012 I'll ignore the name calling and condescension and extract the helpful info you've offered. I will check out cookie cutter. Much obliged. Quote
Lee Mac Posted July 14, 2012 Posted July 14, 2012 Hi guys, The attached program will delete all references of selected blocks (standard / dynamic / nested [to any level]), and will then proceed to purge the block definitions from the drawing, hence removing all trace of the block from the drawing. The command is 'delblocks'. At some point I'll add it to my site. Cheers, Lee DeleteBlocksV1-0.lsp Quote
ibach Posted January 16, 2013 Posted January 16, 2013 (edited) Lee Mac, you are a god! This lsp usually works... If only this would delete a block i have in my drawing... It did not. The bast*rd block is still present in design center and simply would not go away. I cannot find this block inserted anywhere in the drawing. Strangely, before I started your lisp i did purge, and there was nothing to purge, after running your lsp I was able to purge 1 bad textstyle and 2 other unnamed blocks... I than opened the problem block in block editor only be even more surprised, now the block was empty, no geometry inside (there was some before)! To test even further, I made a big red circle in blockeditor in this block, and it still was not present on the screen, than I tried to insert it and insert worked. Big red circle on screen. Did delblocks again and it did not remove the block. Still big red circle on the screen... To my surprise, it was not a block anymore. Exploded geometry. And finally the block is not available in insert command, BUT in the design center it IS still there, and it has no geometry inside! I think I'm going crazy here... I'm going to do purge, audit, purge, now manually, close the drawing and do recover... Purge - nothing to purge... audit - no errors found...Purge - nothing to purge...SAVE, CLOSE. RECOVER with no errors... block still in design center with no geometry in it! Edited January 16, 2013 by ibach Quote
ibach Posted January 16, 2013 Posted January 16, 2013 After all this I made a block with the same name, inserted it to my dwg, did undo, and hum... Block is gone from design center... sick... What on earth could do this to a DWG? Thank you for your lsp, it was really impossible to weed out this block (and few others) from this file without it. It did not do all the job, but it sure helped a lot. There must be something wrong in design center in autocad 2013 sp 1.1, or the script needs an update, but it was definitely usable. Quote
Lee Mac Posted January 16, 2013 Posted January 16, 2013 Hi ibach, I'm not entirely sure what could be causing the behaviour you have described - but to clarify: my program certainly does not explode blocks, it only deletes them. Aside, when checking whether a block exists in a drawing, I do not tend to use Design Center (in fact, I rarely ever use Design Center for anything); but rather either check the list in the BEDIT dialog, or check the drop-down list in the BLOCK dialog, or test the drawing programmatically. For what its worth, the Delete Blocks program posted in this thread may now be found on my site here: http://lee-mac.com/deleteblocks.html I'm glad you found the program useful, and thank you for your compliments. Cheers, Lee Quote
ibach Posted January 16, 2013 Posted January 16, 2013 I am perfectly aware that your program does not explode blocks. It's plain to understand reading the code. There is just something about this file of mine... As I have said before, I'm not good writing a code, am a bit dyslexic so have problem switching letters in a word thus lots of trouble finding the errors I make along (thank god for auto correct). I do reed it well enough to keep track of elementary commands. (just look at all the edits i do to my posts in a short time...it's just f*up brain of mine) Oh, and this is a first time I have actually used DC for something... Not so bad actually, but slow to the edge of pain. Quote
ReMark Posted January 16, 2013 Posted January 16, 2013 Give the program SUPERPURGE a try. Find it at http://www.manusoft.com Quote
ibach Posted January 16, 2013 Posted January 16, 2013 Done SPURGE, not only it took an hour on this file, but did not do the job. Did some other good things though, and is a good program. Quote
Lee Mac Posted January 16, 2013 Posted January 16, 2013 I am perfectly aware that your program does not explode blocks. It's plain to understand reading the code. There is just something about this file of mine... I wasn't undermining your understanding, just clarifying for others reading the thread... Quote
ibach Posted January 16, 2013 Posted January 16, 2013 I did not take it that way. I just explained myself and apologized for me not be coherent enough in syntax, both, programming and language. Your comment was in place. Quote
ibach Posted January 17, 2013 Posted January 17, 2013 (edited) Lee Mac, I have block named $AUDIT_BAD_BLOCK_RECORD1 that cannot be removed i.e it comes back after audit. What can I do about it? Any ideas? Block is empty... Edited January 17, 2013 by ibach Quote
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