Fundamentals of Blocks
May 3, 2024
Presented by: Jaymz Wooden
Blocks are a fundamental component of CAD, allowing you the simplicity of placing complex objects as a single entity. In the Land F/X world, blocks play a crucial role in your ability to customize the software to match your existing or desired standards. Take a tour of the streamlined process for proper block creation and management brought to you by Land F/X. We’ll cover the dos and and don’ts of creating and saving blocks, and demonstrate how our numerous block library locations work with different parts of the software.
Webinar Contents:
Note: The following catalog of content covered in this webinar is time stamped to allow you to follow along or skip to sections of the video that are relevant to your questions. You can also search for content on this page using the FIND command in your browser (CTRL + F in Windows, Command + F in Mac OS.)
- Intro/TOC
- What is a Block?
- Types of Blocks
- Understand How Land F/X Manages Blocks
- Block Creation and Best Practices
- Block Folder Structure & Placing Blocks
- Saving Different Types of Blocks and Integrating Your Own
0:00 – 5:09: Intro/TOC
5:10 – 7:06: What is a Block?
- A block is just a collection of objects combined into a single entity.
- It's just a DWG that you can insert into your current drawing.
- It's not a special file type.
- Having a drawing with all your blocks in it is not a best practice. This method is obsolete and requires much more maintenance.
- You should not have any blocks in a drawing template.
7:07 – 9:39: Types of Blocks
- Standard blocks (7:07
- Dynamic blocks (7:40)
- Visibility states (8:12)
- DimScale blocks (8:58)
- Examples of blocks (9:23)
- Plant symbols
- Irrigation equipment
- Schedules
- Concept Lines
- Site blocks (including vehicles and people)
9:40 – 10:22: Understand How Land F/X Manages Blocks
- Block folder structure
- Why to move away from templates or drawings with many blocks
10:23 – 17:04: Block Creation and Best Practices
- Always set your units prior to drawing.
- Load the appropriate Layer States.
- Assign the correct Preference Set.
- Draw all elements at full size.
- Strike a balance between details and legibility.
- Linework should only consist of polylines, arcs, and circles. (Avoid splines.)
- Make sure the insertion point of the block is 0,0.
- Make sure the drawing is free of Proxies, Xrefs, Text Styles, etc. The only object in the drawing should be the block.
17:05 – 28:02: Block Folder Structure & Placing Blocks
Land F/X block folder structures (17:31)
Block folder structure as applied within CAD (21:29)
How Land F/X blocks download (22:31)
Keyboard commands for placing blocks (23:35)
Dynamic blocks (25:54)
28:03 – end: Saving Different Types of Blocks and Integrating Your Own
Block components example (exploded block) (28:03)
Selecting objects to save as a block and using our Save Block tool to save it into the Land F/X system (30:23)
Setting the block's insertion point (30:41)
Choosing a folder location to save a block (31:48)
Slide files (created automatically when a block is saved) (32:29)
Scale and rotation settings for a saved block (32:51)
Editing a saved block to correct its rotation, scale, and/or insertion point (34:18)
Reshooting the preview slide of a saved block (37:11)
Running the PURGE command to purge any block definitions from a drawing (40:28)
Using our BatchMan batch processing tool to shoot slides for multiple blocks, or folders of blocks, at once (44:57)
Correcting units, rotation, or scale in multiple block XML files using a find and relace search (49:07)
Saving DimScale blocks (51:00)
Saving Detail Builder blocks (59:29)
AutoCAD Classic Insert command (1:01:10)
Questions from the webinar
Click on a question from one of the live viewers to see the answer below.
Our LandFX folder is on a server, and we have a couple of possibly duplicate folders – e.g.,. 03-site furnishings and 05-site furnishings. How do we "merge" or eliminate the duplicated folders?
All our folders and files are downloaded on demand, as Jaymz is showing. If you have custom blocks saved into these locations, it will be up to you to make sure things are backed up before removing or merging anything.
I suggest doing a backup of things as is, then simply delete all folders. The system will then be able to re-download the proper folder structure as we have it set up. If there were custom blocks, you could then retrieve them as needed and place them back into the folder in their appropriate locations.
What are the differences between placing this type of block and placing plants? Are the processes similar?
The difference is functionality and the data tied to the blocks. Placed blocks through our Plan, Elevation, and Generic Plant graphics locations simply consists of inserting "dumb" blocks. Placing from a Manager would tie additional data to the blocks, making them "smart."
Are all blocks drawn in Imperial scales? Our office drafts in meters to align with civil engineering, so when I insert a Plan Graphic, the scale it comes in at is huge. I've set the scale in Land F/X to recognize that I'm drafting at 1:500 or 1:1000 in meters, but the blocks remain massive. Is there a way around this issue that doesn't involve scaling every block individually?
In the block settings, you just need to set it to Meters. From the block selection dialog box, simply select the block and click Edit. In the dialog box for setting the scale and rotation settings, you can see the units can be set to Meters.
I hope to see how to use these blocks in Revit using the Planting F/X Plugin. When will there be such a tutorial?
We are currently in the process of porting our block library to Revit, which we are hoping will be completed this year. Toward the end of the year, or early next year, we will likely release videos showing that workflow.
It's very clunky to make that change for every individual block, and the scaling feature is far from intuitive, even using the manual scaling option. I highly recommend making it possible to change this setting for blocks more generally by changing the scale in the ribbon.
The setting is visible in the Save Block dialog box, and is intended to be set when saving the block. It should even default to Meters if the units are set as such, so I’m not sure how this sitation resulted where you have such a large number of blocks set incorrectly. The setting is just in the XML file, so you could also use any Find and Replace in Files capability to update multiple files at once.
When I open the Finder folder from the C: drive, I do not see as many blocks as I see from the F/X Site pull-down menu.
If you are looking in the back end, you will only see the files and folders for what you have actually clicked into when in CAD. Once you have placed a block from within CAD, those folders will appear automatically.
We have been manually adding a "mask" to our plant blocks on every project so that groundcover hatches are not showing inside the blocks, also so that our SF in our schedules remains accurate (unlike when you exclude the block from the groundcover) to the size of the planting areas. Would the most efficient solution to this problem be to add the mask to our source blocks?
As long as that mask is just a solid hatch, yes, that would be the best solution.
Can we do this when the block has a wipeout in it?
"It is generally recommend to not have a wipeout within a block, and instead use a solid hatch. But beyond that, you should be able to have a wipeout in a block."
Contact
- Land F/X
Our software tailors AutoCAD® to the needs of landscape architects, irrigation designers, and other professionals. We automate your most tedious tasks and ensure accuracy, giving you more time to design.