From the course: AutoCAD: Advanced Dynamic Blocks

Using dynamic blocks - AutoCAD Tutorial

From the course: AutoCAD: Advanced Dynamic Blocks

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Using dynamic blocks

- [Instructor] In the previous chapter, we looked at utilizing standard blocks and developed our own standard block of a door to see how that work flow, that particular process worked. We're now in a new chapter where we're going to be looking at dynamic blocks and how the dynamic blocks can make our lives so much easier when we're working with blocks in our AutoCAD drawings. So we got a new drawing for you. Surprise, surprise, it's called dynamicblocks.DWG, and you can download it from the library, as usual to follow along with the video. So what we've got here is a two story house. Left hand view is ground floor. Right hand view is the next floor up where the bedrooms are and so on. So, we've got basically, a number of dynamic blocks available to us in the drawing, and what I'm going to show you is how to utilize those dynamic blocks. Now on the ground floor plan, we've got a table with four chairs in the dinning room here. So we're going to zoom in nice and tight. So do a bit of zooming and panning so that we can see what we're doing. And you'll see that there are four chairs all around what looks like a square table. So what I'm going to do here, is click on the block itself, there it is, and you can see it's a dynamic block because it hasn't just got the insertion grid. What it has got, is the anchors, these drag anchors. Now those drag anchors allow us to change the parameters of the block, but also the chairs around the table have visibility states applied to them as a dynamic block as well. So if you now click on the right hand drag anchor, click on it, you'll see some increments kick in and those are the different sizes of table that are available to you. So as you mover over each increment, can you see that the table gets bigger and bigger? So I'm going to go to that one there and click. Hit escape to deselect. I've now got a much bigger table with more chairs. So I've got more chairs, that's the visibility states bit, making more chairs visible but I've also made the table bigger in the dynamic block as well. So you can combine different parameters in a dynamic block both visibility and size like that to generate a different block dynamically using a dynamic block. Let's just zoom out slightly now and pan across a little bit to the bedrooms in the upper floor. We've got two beds here in one of the main bedrooms. So lets zoom in and pan again like so. Now I'm going to remove this bed here. I don't want it anymore, I'm going to delete that one. What I want, is a larger double bed, say a king or a queen sized bed. So I select the block, and this time it's all about visibility states. So there an arrow here, like so. Click there, and I can choose the type of bed I want. So I've got an entire family of blocks in a dynamic block. So I can come down here and go for a California king, and you can see I've got a much bigger bed. If I go back again to say a twin, you can see there that it's a much smaller bed. So the whole idea is I've got all these different bed sizes that I can work with. Each one of those is a different visibility state in the dynamic block. I'll just hit escape there to deselect. Double click on the wheel of the mouse to zoom ex tense again. So you can see there that what I've done, is utilize the dynamic blocks to alter the content of my drawing. But the benefit I have, is it does it all for me. It's all in the dynamic block. I don't have to edit those blocks in any which way, shape, or form. The dynamic block allows me with it's parameters to alter the visual of the block in the drawing. And that's why we've got this advanced dynamic blocks course for you. The whole idea is that we can work with the dynamic blocks, they make us more effective, they make us more productive, and it all comes down to that bottom line. The less clicks you have to make when you're working with blocks and drawing, the quicker you can get the drawings out and generate the money for your company, your organization or whatever you are doing.

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