Hello, my name is Randy Dobson. I'm an instructor here in the Houston, Texas area, and this video will be covering blocks. And I'm also going to do right blocks, W blocks on here at the same time because they are so similar.
I don't think there's a need to separate them up. A block is what it implies. You're taking a bunch of small little individual things, think of like Tonka toys or even a puzzle, and you're putting them together and a block combines everything into one. and this can become an extremely powerful tool if you utilize it correctly and you know understanding that a block is when you create something that stays in a drawing and then a write block is something that you save outside of a drawing that you want to use in the future say like this little symbol I'm showing you here this isn't in my business this is a fire hydrant and a gate valve left off a little line here and this is this is a water line right here so uh just to kind of show you how you create we'll start with the block first because after that the right block is much much easier a block will take all pieces of information a line an arc a circle text whatever and it will combine it into one as you can see here when i go across You know, these are all separate items.
Okay, when you come up here to insert, and it is create a block. And here you can create a block or write block. We will be getting to that.
Create a block. It needs three pieces of information. It needs a name. It needs a base point. And it needs objects, obviously.
We're going to call this FH. I'll just say fire hydrant so I've given it a name now I'm going to come over here and do right here select objects and I'm not going to select my water line I just want to get the fire hydrant with the with the t connection so I'm just going to window it that's all that I'm selecting so I hit enter now this is something that I want you to remember if I hit ok it would create the block Now you may say, well, Mr. Dobson, you said I needed three pieces of information and you only put two. That is correct. But what I'm not telling you is by clicking OK, I'm accepting that AutoCAD is going to use 00, remember your coordinates, as my base point.
The main thing that I teach in my classes. is that I don't want AutoCAD to decide anything for you. AutoCAD works for you.
You do not work for AutoCAD. So if I just hit OK, it would set 00. If my project was in the 100,000 coordinates, this fire hydrant would just be a speck of dust whenever I brought it in. So even if you're not sure of the insertion point or the base point, I'm going to go pick point. Just pick anywhere, okay?
I'm just going to pick right here, just so it's at least in the drawing area. Now it's asking you right here, do you want to retain this? Do you want to keep this as it is with all the little pieces? Do you want to go ahead and convert it to a block, and it'll make it a block in here? Or do you want to delete it, meaning I'm going to make you a block, but it's going to take this away.
So I'm just going to go ahead and delete it and hit okay. So now I've created a block. Now I'm going to go back over here to insert.
This is still under this. And I'm going to insert block. If I go to more options, you know, if you have a bunch of blocks, they'll all be listed here.
Well, here's my fire hydrant. Again, it's saying this will be the insertion point, the scale, the rotation. These AutoCAD will do for you.
because you always want things to come in at one to one but i want to give it the insertion point so i hit ok and as you can see there is my fire hydrant and i've created a block we notice i hover over it if i go to move i can just go to move grab any piece of it if i can get my move command to work there we go and it moves over here or i can go to copy and i'm just copying it at all i'm just keep hitting this copying it all over the place okay now one of the big reasons that i uh an enormous advocate for blocks is uh imagine and i'm gonna i'm gonna go back here a little bit let's go back to where there's just one now if you want a block and you want to put it back into its little pieces you just go to explode I'm not sure of where they have it over here. I'm going to look for it this time. I'm not sure of where they put it. I'm just going to give you the easy way. Just hit X and enter.
Pick it. Hit enter. Now this is all back to individual things. Okay.
Now you might say, well, Mr. Dobson, why do I need to make a block? I'm going to copy. I could copy this thing all over the place.
Just like you did with the block. Okay. I want to kind of show you the before and after.
So I did that. But earlier I had a block over here. I'm going to draw a line so we can know which one's.
this is your individuals and this is your block okay i'll try to draw as many as it's on that side that looks about the same so here's your co-worker they did it this way and you did it this way well the boss comes in and tells you that the client doesn't want the valve on there anymore okay so this person has to do one of two things they can go through here and erase each valve and bring this line down which would take forever or they could do that on one and copy it over uh all the the times again okay and just to exaggerate this let's let's make it a little bit more interesting for you because you might say that won't take me very long So I'm just copying these. So this person erases all of these and then creates one without a valve and then copies them all over again. But you, being the smart person, you go and do, you double click on this and now you can edit it.
So it actually opens up the block for you to edit. I'm going to erase this out. I'm going to connect these lines, and I'm going to hit close block.
Do I want to redefine it? Yes. Now look at all mine. I've changed them all.
Okay. And this is one of the really, really nice things about layers. Now, another thing to remember with layers, and I'm going to have to come over here and make, I'm sorry, blocks. I have to make some layers. I was thinking about that.
I'm going to just make a couple layers. We'll call layer one red. and layer two will be magenta and layer three will be green now one thing i didn't show you when i created this block and i'm going to come over here if you notice everything is on layer 0. everything i created was on layer 0. i'm going to get i'm going to get rid of all this so we can have a cleaner screen So all this was on layer zero.
That is the 100% correct way to make a block. When you make a block, all of your objects need to be on layer zero. Okay.
Now I did the fire hydrant on layer zero. And this one right here, you know, I'm going to take this whole fire hydrant and I'm going to put it on layer. three and as you can see all the individual things are green so i'm going to come over here to insert create a block i'm going to call it fire hydrant wrong i'm going to pick a base point and i'm going to select my object i hit ok I go to insert.
There's fire hydrant wrong. There it is. Looks all fine and dandy. Okay.
Now, I want you to notice that I'm on layer zero. Okay. So I'm going to go to insert fire hydrant.
I'm going to put that here. Remember, this is the good way. This is the bad way.
And I'm going to copy these. Down here three times. So this is on layer zero. This is on layer zero. And this is on layer zero.
I'm going to change this to layer one. I'm going to change this to layer one. I'm going to change this.
to layer two i'm going to change this to layer two okay i'll just erase those So, the reason of having it put on layer zero is whatever block, I'm sorry, whatever layer I put my block on, it will take those properties. This will always stay green, okay, unless I go in and have to do a hard change, take the time to do it. Any layer that I put this fire hydrant on will be, it will take the correct properties.
That is why doing layer zero. Many, many people in this world working in AutoCAD do not know that. And again, that is one of the downfalls or one of the bad things of AutoCAD. It allows you to do things incorrectly that can still look right because watch this. I'm going to copy these.
I'm going to put this on layer three. And I'm going to put this on layer three. What do you know?
They're both green. Okay. But that's just like saying that even a broken clock is correct twice a day.
If your clock's broke at 10.30 and it's showing 10.30 at 10.30 in the morning and 10.30 at night, it is correct. Okay. But that doesn't mean that it's a good clock.
So working with the blocks can be a very powerful tool. Also. When we go to write block, this has these in this drawing. If I go and start another drawing, see if it'll do it for me here. And I come up here to insert.
As you can see, there's no block in here. So if I go back over here, the... this is yeah here's the individual one uh now if instead of going to create block i go to write block it still needs three pieces of information it needs a base point it needs the objects but instead of just needing a name it needs a path because it's going to take it outside the drawing it will make it its own little autocad drawing and you can bring that into any drawing okay so mine's going to go to user Randy's documents new block we'll just call it fire hydrant detail so that's the name of it we want insertion to be unitless I always use best to do base point I'll just pick over here and then objects I hit that.
I'm going to go ahead and just retain it in this drawing. So see, it stays this individual thing. But now, if I go back over here to drawing two, and I go to insert, this is for things that are in the drawing. Now I can go over here to browse, go to my documents, which is already going to that. And hopefully it's right here on top.
Let me change my date, create it. There it is, fire hydrant detail. I double click on it.
I want to specify the insertion point and there is my fire hydrant. that can bring it in that's what's that is how you can create a library of drawings that you're going to reuse over and over again you don't want to sit there and have to draw this over and over again or you don't want to have to go back to your last project open up a drawing go find a fire hydrant copy it and paste it into the new drawing again this comes back to the organization just like in layers uh that you uh you know you want to be as organized uh many people won't use blocks because they don't see a need for them again blocks are there to help you if you need to edit uh to do something that's you know to do it very quickly and again just hitting x and enter will explode it that exploded this one block but i still have that block it stays in this drawing now now it becomes a block inside of here here's the block exploded it's all normal stuff and here's the individual object that's all one so very powerful tool excuse me and Hopefully you will go and expand on it a little bit more and see all its uses. And that concludes my video on blocks and write blocks.
Thank you.