Updating a Block from an External File

Updating a Block from an External File
As you progress through a design project, you make countless revisions. With traditional drafting
methods, revising a drawing such as the studio apartment floor plan takes a good deal of time. If
you change the bathroom layout, for example, you have to erase every occurrence of the bathroom
and redraw it 16 times. With AutoCAD, on the other hand, revising this drawing can be a quick
operation. You can update the studio unit you just modified throughout the overall plan drawing
by replacing the current Unit block with the updated Unit file. AutoCAD can update all occurrences
of the Unit block. The following exercise shows how this is accomplished:
NOTE For this exercise, remember that the blocks representing the units in the 07b-plan and
07b-plan-metric files are named 07a-unit and 07a-unit-metric.
1. Make sure you’ve saved the 07a-unit (07a-unit-metric for metric users) file with
the changes, and then return to the 07b-plan file that is still open. Choose Window 
\directory path\07b-plan.dwg. Your full path to the 07b-plan.dwg file is shown in
the Windows menu. Metric users should use 07b-plan-metric.dwg.
WARNING This method doesn’t update exploded blocks. If you plan to use this method to
update parts of a drawing, don’t explode the blocks you plan to update. See Chapter 4.
2. Click the Insert Block tool on the Draw toolbar.
3. Click the Browse button. In the Select Drawing File dialog box, double-click the 07a-unit
filename (07a-unit-metric for metric users).
4. Click OK in the Insert dialog box. A warning message tells you that a block already exists
with the same name as the file. You can cancel the operation or redefine the block in the
current drawing.
5. Click Yes. The drawing regenerates (unless you have Regenauto turned off).
6. At the Specify insertion point or [Basepoint/Scale/X/Y/Z/Rotate]: prompt, press
the Esc key. You do this because you don’t want to insert the Unit file into your drawing;
you’re just using the Insert feature to update an existing block.
WARNING If Regenauto is turned off, you must use the Regen command to force a regeneration
of the drawing before the updated Unit block appears on the display.
7. Zoom in to one of the units. The floor tile appears in all the units as you drew it in the Unit
file (see Figure 7.7).
Nested blocks must be updated independently of the parent block. For example, if you modified
the Toilet block while editing the 07a-unit file and then updated the 07a-unit drawing in
the 07b-plan file, the old Toilet block wouldn’t be updated. Even though the toilet is part of the
07a-unit file, it’s still a unique, independent block in the Plan file, and AutoCAD won’t modify
it unless specifically instructed to do so. In this situation, you must edit the original Toilet block
and then update it in both the Plan and Unit files.


TIP If you want to substitute one block for another in the current file, type –Insert↵. (Don’t forget
the minus sign in front of Insert.) At the Block name: prompt, enter the block name followed by an
equal sign (=), and then enter the name of the new block or the filename. Don’t include spaces
between the name and the equal sign.
Also, block references and layer settings of the current file take priority over those of the imported
file. For example, if a file to be imported has layers of the same name as the current file, but those layers
have color and linetype assignments that are different from the current file’s, the current file’s
layer color and linetype assignments determine those of the imported file. This doesn’t mean, however,
that the imported file on disk is changed; only the inserted drawing is affected.