Subtitles of the Movie

We're now in Exercise 2 of Adding Parameters and as you can see we've still got our bathtub and our toilet Dynamic Blocks there but we've just got our Normal door Block here at the moment and what we want to do is we want to make that Dynamic so that we can align it with the door opening, but more importantly, flip the door from side to side so that we can alter where the door opens in relation to its hinge point. So again, like before, I just double-click and there's my door Bock there. I OK that to open it in the Block Editor. Now you'll notice the UCS is nice and neatly already on the 0,0 there, so I don't need to do a Move to absolute 0,0 at all, but I do need to save, so I go to Save, Save Block As and we're going to call it Door -DYN, like the other Dynamic Blocks in the drawing it's consistent, the naming is consistent there. We're going to add two Parameters so we click on the Parameters tab and the first is an Alignment Parameter, so I click on Alignment and I'm going to go from this corner here, left-click on the Endpoint Snap, to this corner here, left-click on the Endpoint Snap. So there's my Alignment Parameter so that that corner, the hinge point of the door, aligns with the opening. Now I'm going to apply a Flip Parameter, so that I can flip the door from this side to this side and vice versa. So I click on Flip and come into the Drawing Area. Now it asks me for the Base point of the Reflection line, similar to the Mirror Command. If I hold down Shift and right-click and select Mid between 2 points on the Object Snap shortcut menu I can go from here, left-click, that's the first point of my Mid, to here, left-click, that's the second point of my Mid, and my Mirror line starts there. Now I'm going to take that Mirror line vertically upwards using my Polar Tracking and just click anywhere on that Polar Tracking line. Left-click. It'll ask for a Label Location; don't worry, that doesn't appear on the drawing so I left-click over here. So you can see now that arrow shows that I'm going to flip the door about that dotted Mirror line there on the Flip Parameter. I've got an exclamation mark, though - if I hover over it - telling me No actions associated with the parameter. So we go to the Actions tab like so, we select the Flip Action and we come into the Drawing Area. It asks me to select a parameter; well, that's easy. There's my Flip State 1. And then it asks me to select the objects for that action. I select everything, so it's a left-click and drag for a Crossing Selection; left-click again. Make sure you've got everything selected and right-click to confirm. There is my Flip Action and you can see it highlights everything when I hover over it. That's a good sign. That means we've done it correctly. So now we save the block. Now, something I haven't shown you is testing your Block. If I go to the Test Block option here, this is only available in AutoCAD 2010, but it takes me into a testing area where I can click on the Block itself, click on the Flip Action and you can see that I'm testing my flip action there. I've also got my Alignment there, but I've got nothing to align it to, so I can't really do much there with that one. I'll have to test that in the drawing, but what I can do now, I can close the Test Area like so and it takes me back into the Block Editor. I close the Block Editor as well. Do I want to save the changes to the door dynamic? Yes I do, so I click on Save the Changes. Now I can bring that Block into the drawing. I click on Insert, Door-DYN, which is there, Insertion point, Specify onscreen; leave the Scale and the Rotation as they were, like we did with the bathtub and the toilet. I click on OK. As I bring my door in now can you see it flipping around as I touch the walls? So, I'm just going to click that Midpoint there and that's inserted the door and this part of the door here has aligned itself with that vertical part of the wall there. But if I select the Block now look. I can flip which way the door opens. Ideally I want it to the left. It's opening up against the toilet there, and obviously that provides a little bit more privacy. You don't want it this way because if obviously if somebody walks in now you can see the toilet as you go in. The door there with the Flip Action automatically provides privacy and is a good design there for that particular bathroom. I'll just hit Escape there to come out. Delete my original Block there; I don't need that one. It's still there. I can still insert it as a Block if I want to, but now you can see you've got a bathroom designed with one, two, three Dynamic Blocks.