Block Managment

[AQucsaiJr]

At my company we use DesignCenter to insert blocks from a drawing we have on our network drive. All of our drawings use these block, and some projects are close to 100 drawings per package. My question is, when we update a block in the blocks drawing we are pulling all the blocks from on the network drive, is there any way to update this block through an entire project ( 100+ DWG's) without physically opening each drawing up, removing the old block, purging the drawing, and then inserting the more up-to-date block? We do not change block names so all the accurences of each block will have the exact same name.

Anouther question i have is when we need just one block on one drawing updated we use the ATTSYNC command, however this command works differently on every computer in our office. Some of us are running Auto-CAD 2007 and the rest are running Auto-CAD 2009, and it only seem to function correctly everytime on the Auto-CAD 2009. Is there a setting within CAD that will effect the way this command functions?

[dbroada]

You shouldn't need to remove the old block and purge. Just re-inserting the block and accepting "update block?" should be enough. I don't use Design Centre so I can't comment on how to do it though.

 

ATTSYNC is only necessary if you have blocks with attributes in them, and then only if the newer block has different attributes (more, less, moved) to the existing one. Again I can't comment on settings as we all use 2008 and it works as expected here.

[AQucsaiJr]

All of our blocks have attributes in them and most of the time it is just the attributes that need to be updated. Also I have tried what you suggested and the block inserts and updates however the attributes get a little messed up after doing this some times.

[dbroada]

In what way do the attributes get messed up?

 

I have seen them get messed up if duplicate attribute tags have been used but can't thik of any other time that attsync hasn't worked.

[AQucsaiJr]

Well after I update them in the drawing using the Update Only right click option in Design Center, the attributes throughout all the blocks on that drawing will be shifted to the side more than they should be. I have found that closing the drawing entirely and then reopening it will fix most of the attribute problems in most of the blocks on that drawing and then I use the ATTSYNC command to fix the rest. This seems to work it just seem to me to be too many steps to update one block in a drawing.

[dbroada]

thats certainly more steps than I ever use but I don't use Design Centre. We have all our blocks as individual files and they can be updated using the INSERT BlockName= command. This won't work for you if all your blocks reside in a collection drawing.