Block Text Attribute Quirky All of a Sudden

[Bill Tillman]

I've been using this block for the past couple of weeks. Someone else built it and it worked fine. The suddenly today the text attributes all stack up on top of each other. Really throws me a curve. This is a useful block for the work I'm doing these days so it's worth the effort of finding why this thing that used to work with my copy of AutoCAD 2021 suddenly started misbehaving.

 

My AutoCAD is 2021, running on an I7 with 16 GB RAM, nothing fancy for graphics card, just the one on the mobo, which is an Intel (R) HD Graphics 4000. I've cold booted a couple of times today but nothing stops the text from moving from the left side over to the right. When  I open it in the Block Editor, the attributes are where they should be but not when I return to model space on the layout tabs. And what's strange is that just this morning the block was working fine on this same computer.

Block Text Issue.dwg

Edited September 4, 2020 by Bill Tillman

[BIGAL]

Just changed text style in block is that what your after ? Check standard with ht =0

[Bill Tillman]

Hey BIGAL, how's things going in the land down under. Well I tried what you suggested but same results. Opened the block in the block editor and tried changing the text style and then ran ATTSYNCH after closing...same problem still there.

[BIGAL]

Post an image please.

[steven-g]

Both your attributes have the same 'tag' name. Although AutoCAD will physically allow this it cannot work with attributes having the same tag they have to be unique or you will get errors. Just rename one of them.

[Dadgad]

1 hour ago, steven-g said:

Both your attributes have the same 'tag' name. Although AutoCAD will physically allow this it cannot work with attributes having the same tag they have to be unique or you will get errors. Just rename one of them.

steven-g, well spotted, haven't looked, nor feel the need to, sure you are correct. 

I am curious how it is, that it would work sometimes though, any thoughts?  

[steven-g]

Certainly in LT with the 'ATTEXT' command duplicate attribute names cause a failure, only the first attribute is reported, this is a problem I have come across several times on the Forums. It is the tag that Autocad uses to perform certain functions, if you open the enhanced attribute editor (double-click on an attributed block) you see the duplicates colored red which hints at a problem.

 

Exactly how this causes errors is internal to AutoCAD and it suprises me that when you are working in the block editor it doesn't give you a warning about having duplicate attribute tags (but it doesn't).

The help files do list it as a requirement

but it isn't checked by the program.

 

Why this particular error only shows sometimes? I have no idea but I can see the programming logic behind that, placing the same tag at the same place.

[Bill Tillman]

Thanks all. The duplicate tag name was the issue. I changed it and everything is as it should be now with the block. Still can't figure out why it worked for the first 3 weeks of this gig and then suddenly it started acting up.

[steven-g]

Have you perhaps had a Windows update, or maybe installed the latest 2021.1 version update. There are no hard and fast rules about what will happen when you do have duplicate tag's other than it can cause problems, but good to see the issue is sorted now.