Exporting Dynamic Blocks to single block drawings

[richardb]

Hi There,

 

This is my first post on this forum, here goes...

 

I'm new to the concept of Dynamic Blocks, however i have a sizeable drawing estate that is built almost entirely of Dynamic blocks. The task is to replace each Dynamic block with a singular block reference, but before i get that far, i need to know what we're facing.

 

How would i export dynamic blocks from a drawing into a directory? Each block contained within a dynamic block would need to be separated out? Is this even possible?

 

Please help.

 

Thanks

Richard

[richardb]

Just to add to this, I've looked elsewhere and found LeeMac's lisp routine( http://www.theswamp.org/index.php?topic=32681.0) and could not get it to work; it gave the following error;

 

; error: no function definition: VLAX-GET-ACAD-OBJECT

 

thanks

[Tiger]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

 

What do you mean by 'singular block reference'?

 

You can use the command WBLOCK to export a block out to it's own DWG-file. Are the blocks nested, as in, blocks within blocks? That could be tricky, if all blocks on all levels needs to be exported. You can use the Design center (command ADCENTER) to see all the blocks in your drawing, my quick search didn't find a way from there to export them out to individual DWGs though.

[dbroada]

it is common to build dynamic block with multiple visibility states. These could be showing different sub blocks but I would normally just hide or make visible lines & text. As Tiger said, you can WBLOCK to export the dynamic block.

 

There are many ways to do what you want but without a typical block to look at you won't necessarily get the best answer. Please post a couple of your blocks.

[dbroada]

assuming visibility states have been used to create your block this thread answers your problem. http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?92450-Split-a-dynamic-block-into-a-single-block-for-each-state

[richardb]

Thanks for coming back to me.

 

Tiger, the type of thing i'm looking at involved dynamic blocks that use visibility states to hide sub-blocks. WBlocking doesn't work in this instance.

 

dBroada, i scourged the link that you posted already It was helpful, in that i was able to use two of the LSP tools listed; DynSplit (which essentially explodes a dynamic block into it's constituent parts whilst still retaining block principles and their naming conventions) and WBA (which exports ALL blocks within a drawing to a single drawing in a directory) .

 

These tools helped, though its slow going through all of the block drawings they have. the DYNSPLIT lsp only works by selecting a single Dynamic Block as opposed to preferably selecting everything within a drawing.

 

Thanks for the help. Hope that actually makes sense to someone else

[Tiger]

Would the command BURST work for a dynamic block with sub-blocks? It sounds like it would do what DynSplit does though.

[dbroada]

Tiger, most often Dynamic Blocks do not contain sub blocks. They contain the lines & text necessary for all the "sub blocks" with the ability to turn lines on & off. I don't think BURST (or EXPLODE) will leave anything other than component parts.

 

richardb - if I were you I would comment in the other thread directly to Lee who can probably make any changes particular for you.

[Tiger]

I am actually spending some time right now trying to put together a dynamic block with multiple view states for a tree.... this feels like learning a whole new language!

[dbroada]

 

we were only shown visibility states with our training (I'm not convinced the trainer knew any more) but they are probably the least useful of all the things you can do with a dynamic block.

 

Unless things have changed, it is not easy to have more than one visibility property per block. This is a serious drawback. Don't waste your time looking.

[Tiger]

So I gotta ask, how the 'eck do I create a Multi view block? I have found all sorts of things about how to edit a MV block, but I can't seem to get the thing together in the first place?!

 

Help me ODave-iwan Kenobi!

[dbroada]

remember I don't work with AutoCAD these days so I am sure things have changed but from what I remember.....

 

open your block in the block editor

add one visibility parameter to your block

now find the visibility state palette/toolbar.

from here you can rename your visibility state and add others

select one visibility state and using the toolbar select which items are visible or invisible in that state

when you are happy (?) close the block editor and insert the block in the drawing. There should be the single parameter which will display the list of states you have set up

 

HTH. Answers to further questions will be probably be answered in a similarly vague way.

[steven-g]

I believe the burst command will keep the value of attributes that are in a block where explode will revert to the default value, other than that both commands are similar, and any smart's are lost (so all details contained in other visibility states or invisible attributes are lost)