Task 7: Creating your reusable contents

Let’s continue to work better with AutoCAD. Have you examined your drawings? Have you decided which objects that you use repeatedly?

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In previous task, I’ve got good feedback from Neaton and PepaR. It’s good to see that you already using block intensively. I hope you who don’t give feedback also have used it too. Let’s discuss about reusable contents further.

If you have examined your drawing, let’s start creating blocks that you can use later in your next drawings.

Just for your further consideration, these are some common objects we can create as blocks.

Common objects

We usually create common objects as blocks. Common objects can be:

1. Door, windows, furniture objects in architectural design.
2. Standard parts and common parts in manufacturing design.
3. Benchmark points, set out points, gully, etc. in civil design.
4. Valve, pumps, etc. in P&ID diagram.
5. And so on.

Benefits

Why do we create them as blocks? There are some benefits we can get.

1. Less task to redraw the same objects repeatedly.
2. It’s easier to choose objects without having to check the standard size. Even if you are new to the industry. Thank you Neaton for mentioning it.
3. You can have standard objects presentation.
4. Easier and faster to modify common objects. You only need to update/replace one definition. Doesn’t matter if you have dozens or even hundreds of similar objects, they are updated instantly. Designs always change, right? Thank you for PepaR for reminding me about it.
5. Dynamic blocks also allows you to have standard objects with different sizes. Check this dynamic block for wall tutorial.
6. You can also automate some process with some tricks. Check this door trick that ‘trim’ walls automatically.
7. Block is countable and reportable. Unless you use AutoCAD LT, you can create reports using data extraction. Not only the number of blocks, also their properties.

Annotations

Another common objects we create as blocks are annotations.

There are some common annotations that we can create as blocks:

1. Tags. Elevation tags, material finish tags, and others.
2. Title. View title, title blocks, room name, etc.
3. Symbols. North symbol, benchmark points, weld symbol, etc.
4. And so on.

Benefits

Now why would we want to use blocks for annotations?

1. Again, less task to draw repeatedly and easier to choose standard symbols.
2. The benefit you can have specifically for annotation is you can also set standard style. You can set annotations to have specific font type and size.
3. If you use fields, you can make annotation more ‘intelligent’. For example this coordinate label that can update the value automatically.
4. There are some ‘shared fields’ that you can use for every sheets in a drawing. And if you use Sheet Sets, you can even share the common values to all drawings in your project. See how we can create common values in AutoCAD drawing here.

Discussion

The main benefits of blocks is it reduces repetitive task, maintain standard, easier to modify, and make your drawing more intelligent.

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Now, let’s discuss this topic again. Here are some topics we can discuss here:

1. What’s the biggest benefits you have by using blocks at this moment?
2. After you read what we can do with blocks above, do you think you can have more benefits from it? Things that you haven’t done, but you think can be useful?
3. Do you create all objects in blocks in layer 0? And do you also use ByBlock properties? Why?
4. Do you use fields in block attributes? What are they for?
5. Do you use dynamic blocks and annotative blocks? Do you think they are good? Is there any downsides?