From the course: AutoCAD: Advanced Dynamic Blocks

What is an AutoCAD block? - AutoCAD Tutorial

From the course: AutoCAD: Advanced Dynamic Blocks

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What is an AutoCAD block?

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- [Instructor] We're in a chapter now where I'm going to introduce you to AutoCAD blocks. Now, it may be that you've never used AutoCAD blocks in AutoCAD before. Some people don't. Some people just draw everything, but the whole idea of AutoCAD blocks is it allows you to reuse the design data you've already created in your AutoCAD drawings. So I've got a drawing open for you. It's called blocks.dwg. You can download it from the library as usual to follow along with the videos in this chapter, and you may recognize it from the introduction to this course as well. So what is a block? That's the first thing we need to work out, isn't it? What is a block? Why are we using blocks? More importantly why do I need advanced dyanamic blocks compared to a regular block? So we've got two doors in our blocks drawing at the moment. You can see that we've got our regular block, and also to the right there that is a dynamic block. Now, we're going to look at these blocks, and I'm literally going to select them in the drawing in this particular video, and then we're going to have a look at what a standard block does, and then we're going to have a look at what a dynamic block does. I'm going to show you the differences though in this video. So we have a standard block on the left. When I select it, you'll see it's all one object. That is the premise of an AutoCAD block, and it allows you to reuse that data and manipulate in any which way. So you can see there that that is all one door, and it's got that one blue insertion point grip on the bottom left corner of the door as well. So that's a standard AutoCAD block. Now you can manipulate that using any of the modify commands such as Move, Rotate, Copy, Mirror, Stretch et cetera. Obviously, you can use those at any time those commands can be used to manipulate any AutoCAD data. You may find that some of the commands might not work with as well with a block because it's a different entity. It's not a line. It's not a circle. It's a block. It's a group of AutoCAD objects condensed into one object for design reuse. So that's your standard AutoCAD block. I'm now going to just hit Escape like so, and I'm going to to the right and select this block. So what is this block? This is a dynamic block. It's a door block, but it's also what they call a dynamic block, so that dynamic block has a flip action on it, and you can see there that, when I click on that flip action, I can flip the door from left to right because the flip action has been applied in the dynamic block when it's been created. So the whole of a dynamic block is it allows you to add those manipulation tools and just use them with one click. So instead of having to go to the Mirror command, and work out where the Mirror line is, the flip action does it for you. So that's your little introduction into what are blocks. That's the whole idea of blocks. You can see the difference there between the two blocks as well, the standard block and the dynamic block as well, and we'll go into that in a lot more detail as we work through the course.

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