How and Where to use Block, Write Block. And what is Design Center

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I am (name) and I Welcome you all to today’s video.

In the last video, we learned about the text window, expert mode, and calculator.

In today’s video, we will learn about block, write block, and design center.

First of all, let us know about ‘block’. Block means if there are some furniture arrangements or if there are many objects that I want to insert with a specific dimension or some specific requirement, or suppose there are many objects that I want to use regularly, for that we will use a command that is copy command and you can see that if I copy this object then i have a layout available and there i want to insert, so i can, see.ok? But I only have one object right now and it is an easy process to copy and place one object, but In AutoCAD, we have a facility that is block. This means if I want to insert any object or to save this object in a file, I can do that. Suppose if I want to make a library for myself, library means here I have many objects that I use regularly or if I want to use them repeatedly, I will prepare them already and save it and I can use it later by inserting whenever It is required. For such situations, we have the block command.

To use the block command I will type B and press enter. As I will do B enter, here a dialog box will open where I have to specify, suppose here I already have an object that is a bed, so I will specify bed here. Along with entering the bed, I have to select a pick point which justifies from which point that I want to pick the object, as we are learning from the past several videos that if I want to select any object, I have to specify a pick point as the point that I will insert the object from. ok? So I will select the pick point here. Then I have to select the object, so I will go here and to select the object I have to prepare a window. The object is selected and then press enter. Okay. So from here, I can also change the dimension of the object in which I want to save or convert. Then annotative, we will see the use of annotation later. Then we have to select convert to block which will save the selected object into a block and if we want to give any description like dimension or type or any special thing, we can write it here in the description. Then I will click on okay. So now I want to insert this bed and to insert that, as you saw I deleted this first, but only the portion that was selected got deleted, so only the portion that we select here will be deleted or inserted.

4:04

So to insert I will type I and press enter, here we have only one option available, that is bed because there i have created a bed only. so I can select it from here if i want to insert. If I have many drawings that I already saved in the library, I can simply click on browse and see them. Okay. We will select a bed here and I can directly change the scale or the rotation or its unit or the factor or the dimension that I want for the drawing from here. Then I will click on ok. You can see here that the bed is available. If I want it again then I will type ‘I and enter’, and the options will be available here, then I will click on ok. Now I can place this bed. So with the block command, we can make our own library to save such objects that I want to use more than once or repeatedly for my drawings. I can draw and prepare the objects before and save them and insert them when required.

We will look at one more thing. Suppose I have a sofa here or a seating arrangement and I want to convert this to a block, I will type B and enter then I will write sofa set 1, then pick point, I can select it anywhere but for now I will select the center, for now, then select the object, so here the object is selected, then I will press enter, then according to my requirement, I can change the unit here and write a description and lastly click on ok. Now I want to insert here so I will type I and enter, now I have 2 options here, bed and sofa set, I will select the object that I want to insert, then click on ok and you can see that the object is available here. In this way, we can use the block command. But there is a limitation for block command, that is… if I am taking a new drawing sheet and there I want to insert, suppose I have a specific area here, I will offset this so O and press space bar and the dimension for offset I am giving as 1 and press enter. (7 seconds gap) This is bigger than required. So we will do it again, O and enter, then we will specify the dimension as 0.3 and press enter. I will select this and it's done. Okay. Now I want to insert the sofa set that was available there, I will type I and enter, as you can see we don’t have the option of a bed or sofa set. This means when we save a drawing or a library with a block command, we can use that library only for the existing drawing.

We cannot use it in another drawing. So this is the limitation of block. So we have to remember 3-4 things for the block command.

Firstly we have to select the whole object while making a block, select a proper pick point and prepare a drawing first according to our requirement and then make a block.

As per my requirement, I can save several drawings as a block and use them later when I want.

One more thing, as we talked about the limitation, there is also a solution to overcome this limitation. For that we have an option ‘write block’. Write block means Here I have a drawing and I can save it but as a library, not as a block but a write block. This means when I save it, It will be saved as a file of AutoCAD. So come let us see how? As I said we will use a write block, for this, I have a shortcut key which is W, and enter, as i do this, here a window is opened, then I have to select a pick point so this is my pick point. Then I had to select the object, so I selected the object. I will select this and press enter. Whenever I press enter, Here an additional thing that was not present in the block, will be available.

Which is the destination for our file or drawing where it will be saved. Okay. So if I want to save here, I can do that or according to my requirement I want to save it on the desktop, I can do that too. As this is a bed, I will type Bed 1 and click on save. Okay. I can also insert the unit that I want to work on or as I want the output of the drawing. Then I will click on ok and yes.

Now we will go to the desktop and you can see here that a file named bed1 is saved here and when I open it…, a drawing is available with a rename that we gave and I can easily select and copy this from here. (7 seconds gap) Okay.

(10 seconds gap, drawing)

So I have to scale my drawing, that is my bed. I will click on scale and select a pick point and you can see that my drawing is visible here. Or I can select here and click on scale and select a pick point and I will input the scaling factor as.. 0.1 and enter. Here the drawing is available. This means that whatever drawing we select and save with a write block, it will be saved as an individual drawing and to insert that again we can…. either click on browse, desktop, bed 1 and click on open and then click on ok. As you can see, that drawing is available to me. So I can insert it here. And if we want to insert in the second drawing, then again I will type I and enter, then browse and here we will select a drawing that we saved with a write block and press enter and click on ok. Here you can see we have the drawing of the bed but the size is very big, so I will select this again and then click on scale and insert a point and 0.3 and enter. It is still big, so I will make it small, and here you can see the drawing. In this way, we can use the command block and write block. Okay.

13:25

One more thing. Suppose I am making a drawing and I want to submit that drawing to my client and while submitting consider that I have many copies of the same drawing, (6 seconds gap) so here I am just copying this drawing, here you can see, I have 4 different layouts for the same drawing and I have done some modifications here. (18 seconds gap) As you can see, I have 4 different layouts and suppose I examined and checked the layouts and chose this second layout as my final layout. I want to send this file to the client and they require the file in AutoCAD, neither in the PDF nor in any other format. So what we do is we click here and then ‘save as’ we place the file somewhere else and rename it and erase the other 3 drawings and then we will send that file. But with a write block…, we have a facility to save in a different file and send a particular object or a final layout/drawing or object. How? Let's see. As I mentioned, from these 4 drawings, the second one is my final layout or drawing. I will type W and enter, I have to select a pick point so I will select this pick point then I have to select the object, so I will do a window selection and my object is selected, so I will press enter here. As soon as I click on enter I will rename this file on the desktop as ‘final D R G’ that is the final drawing for… plot, the plot which was available,this is the final drawing for my plot. I will click on save and the file will be saved in this path as shown here. One more thing, We can also change the unit if we want, I require inches, so I will let it be inches only. Then I will click on ok and yes. Now we will check on the desktop and here we have a file as the final drawing and when I open it I can see that here we only have a drawing that we finalized. In this way, according to our requirement, if we want to use a specific object for another drawing, we can use a write block and if we want to use an object repeatedly in the same drawing and make libraries, we can use the block command.

So these were the two things for today.

We will learn about one more thing today which is the ‘design center’. Okay. So what is a design center? So when I have multiple drawings and I have saved it with write block command and I am using it regularly according to my requirement, or right now I want to create a library where all my drawings such as furniture drawing or sanitary drawing or any drawing layout or for the parking or any external drawings like trees, plants are stored in different units. For that, I can prepare a drawing sheet and if I want to insert it into our sheet, we can insert the whole sheet there. For that, I will type DC and enter. So here if I already have any files available, suppose I have a file on the desktop, so I will click on browse, then desktop and you can see we have 2 files here, we can use these files. And if that file contains 3 to 4 things, or here let me select browse and bed, okay. So here I have these things available for the drawing that I have selected, if I want blocks, then I can pick up the blocks from that drawing, or I can pick the layers that I have worked on or I can pick the line types that I have used. So in the design center, whatever drawing we have prepared, we can insert that drawing directly into our current drawing. With this, it is easy to use the object that we already have saved and insert it directly into our current drawing.

Clear, so far?

When we want to use any object repeatedly, we don’t need to draw it again and again. Instead, we can save it in our library or as a design center unit and use it as many times as we want. So if I click on a block, a bed is available, so I can simply pick the bed from here and insert it there. Okay.

Suppose I have multiple beds with different dimensions such as bed1, bed2, bed3, etc., I can select the object and insert it there. So in this way we use the design center where If I have multiple options, I can select the one that I want and use it. We will explore this in detail in further videos where I will have many objects and among them I only want to use 2 to 3 specific objects and not the whole drawing but only some selected 2-3 objects so how we can insert them.

In this drawing here, I only have one object bed, so I can only insert the bed. If I had multiple objects or blocks,among them I can select the one that is required and insert it accordingly. Okay.

So in today's video, we learned about block, write block, and design center.

I hope you all will practice this and try to create your own library. I have already assigned you many tasks in your assignment where you have to create and prepare some libraries. So you will prepare this and practice how we can export a certain layout or a drawing with the help of a write block. And if I have multiple objects and I want to insert a specific object, then we can do it with the help of the design center.

So today we learned about the design center.

I hope you all will practice this. During your practice, If you have any queries or comments, click the discussion button below the video and post there. This way, you will be able to connect to fellow learners and discuss the course. Also, Our Team will try to solve your query.

Thank you.