AutoCAD: Designing Dynamic Blocks

Build intelligence into your AutoCAD drawings with dynamic blocks, and update the shape, size, position, orientation, and visibility of objects in blocks on the fly.

Introduction

• Welcome
• Using the exercise files

1. Working with Static Blocks

• Defining and nesting blocks
• Inserting and redefining blocks

2. Applying Geometric and Dimensional Constraints

• Applying dimensional constraints within a block
• Creating geometric constraints within a block
• Adding tangent circles and constraining them to stay tangent
• Defining a parameter referenced by dimensional constraints

3. Designing Dynamic Blocks

• Adding alignment and base-point grips
• Stretching the desk and phone incrementally
• Controlling stretch with a reverse lookup of listed values
• Building position and rotation controls into the armchair
• Positioning and orienting the task chair with a polar grip
• Adding position and flip grips to mirror chairs
• Controlling the visibility of objects from a menu
• Adding an attribute with a field value
• Keeping items centered using the half-distance multiplier
• Advanced topic: Variable-radius filleted corner

4. Accessing Blocks on a Local Area Network

• Writing and inserting blocks to and from files
• Using DesignCenter to access a drawing's block tables
• Searching for blocks with the Content Manager

Conclusion

• Next steps