From the course: AutoCAD: Advanced Dynamic Blocks

Creating a standard block - AutoCAD Tutorial

From the course: AutoCAD: Advanced Dynamic Blocks

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Creating a standard block

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- We're starting a new chapter now, all about using and creating standard blocks. And we've got a drawing for you, it's simple door and then there's a little dash and then 36 inches .dwg, it's a three foot door width, basically. And yes, I'm using imperial unites instead of metric, for once. But basically the whole idea of this particular chapter, is to get you using standard blocks to prepare you for that block creation process, so that then you're ready to move on to the advanced dynamic blocks with all the advanced functionality that dynamic blocks give you. So we're going to make a block of a simple door that's 36 inches across. The opening is 36 inches across. So let's have a look at making a standard block. Now the elements in the simple door, 36 inch drawing are an arch and there's some lines, and there's a rectangle and so on. We're going to make all of this into a simple door block, and we'll call it something like "door-36 inches" or something similar. So what we'll do now, is we'll jump into the insert tab on the ribbon, and you can see in the block definition panel, there's create block. You've also got right block, w block, that we'll cover later. I'm going to go to create block, like so, and it brings up the block definition dialogue box. So I'll just call this something like door and then a dash and then 36 inches, like so. We specify a base point, which will become the insertion point grip on the block. So I click on pick point, and I can use my object snaps for this so I'm going to utilize that end point just there, like that. And you'll see I'd never have guessed those actual coordinates, there like so. Now the block unit is inches, obviously, I've told you that. The drawing is set to inches as well. We're not going to open it in the block editor though, so untick that box. We then select the objects that make up the block. So click on select objects, and just use a crossing window, just to make sure you get absolutely everything, like that, so go from right to left, and then it's a second left click like that, and then enter just to confirm the objects. You should get a little preview up here, like so. Now I'm going to convert this to a block immediately. So as soon as I finish in the block definition dialogue box, I'll have a standard door, 36-inch block. I've got four objects selected. I don't want it to be annotative in this case. I have mentioned annotative already in the previous chapter, don't worry about annotative for this particular block. We're going to scale uniformly in the x and y directions, and we're going to allow the block to be exploded, because we might want to explode it, make a few little changes, and create a slightly different alternative standard block from it. So as soon as I click on okay now, everything looks the same. However, it's now a block. Can you see that? When I hover over it, it's a block reference, we're only ever using layer zero right now. Now a little trick with blocks is if you do create them on layer zero, and all the objects are on layer zero, when you insert it into a drawing, it will automatically adopt the current drafting layer. Now we've only got one layer, if we go back to the home tab, you'll see we've only got the zero layer, we do have a block layer there, though, that we can put our block onto. So what I'm going to do, is I'm going to make that the current drafting layer. So you can see that this one has come in on layer zero, because that was the current drafting layer at the time. If I pan across now, and look at our standard block, what I'll do now, is I'll go to insert, and go to insert here now on the block panel. Click on insert, and there's our door 36 inches. I click on it when I bring this one in, it's using that block layer. So that's your standard block and I've created it on layer zero, so it automatically adopts the current drafting layer when you bring it into the drawing. Now a standard block, as we covered in the previous chapter, is a standard block. You still have to manipulate it using all of the regular AutoCAD tools that are available.

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