Autodesk AutoCAD: Dynamic Blocks and Tool Palettes Tutorials
Dynamic Blocks - Visibility States / Visibility States - Overview
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Subtitles of the Movie (Autodesk AutoCAD: Dynamic Blocks and Tool Palettes / Dynamic Blocks - Visibility States / Visibility States - Overview)
We're now going to look at Visibility States in Dynamic Bocks. A Visibility State in a Dynamic Block is actually an Action. You have to specify a Visibility Parameter and then apply Visibility States to that Parameter. We've actually worked with Blocks that have Visibility States already. Do you remember the bed block that we used where we changed from one bed type to another bed type? Double bed, King, California Queen bed, all that sort of stuff? That was a Visibility State that we used to flick between the bed types. Basically what you're doing is you're using the Dynamic Block as a bucket of blocks and you pick whichever block you want from the bucket by selecting it in the Visibility State. So let's see how that works and how much quicker a Dynamic Block with a Visibility State is as against 3 normal blocks. I'm in the Home tab here, on the Ribbon in AutoCAD 2010. To insert Blocks with AutoCAD previous to AutoCAD 2009 though you use Insert Block on your Draw Toolbar on the left-hand side. I go to Insert here on the Ribbon, click on the down arrow and you see I've got 4 blocks: my Dynamic Wall Sink Block there, I've also got a Front, a Plan and a Side view with my Wall Sinks. I'm going to select my Plan View, Specify onscreen there and OK that and there's my Plan View, click on the point I want it to go on the wall and there we are. One Block, one view. I can't just click on that Block and say, oh, I want a Front View or a Side View. I've actually got to go to Insert again; this time go to Front, WS Front there, Specify onscreen again, click on OK. There's my Block, there's my Midpoint. That's now aligned on that wall as a Front View. Again, though I can't click on there and say I want the Plan View, or a Side View. Again, Insert Block for the Side View and what I do this time now is I go for the Side View here, click on OK because I've already got the Insertion point there and I'll just drop that one, I'll line it in there; let's zoom in so I can see what I'm doing, line it in and just drag across and line that in like so and there we are. There's my Wall Sink against the wall as well, all lined in, as you can see with that one there. I've just used those two lines there to line them up in Front View and Side View. But I've had to use three Blocks. Let's just erase those three there, one, two and three and erase those. Let's bring in now my Dynamic Block. So I go Insert and I find Wall Sink-DYN. Specify the insertion point onscreen and just OK that and when I bring it in now it looks like the Plan View of that Block. So what I'll do, I'll place one there and what I'm going to do now is I'm going to right-click, Repeat Insert, Wall Sink-DYN again here, OK it and just drop it here; right-click, Repeat Insert, Wall Sink-DYN again. Now you think I've probably gone a little bit crazy there by placing three Plan Views, but it's easy now. This one here, I'll just zoom in there, click, click on the grip there and I can select Plan, Side, or Front. Or what I can do is I can just move that, which is what I'm going to do just using that Midpoint to there like so. But this one, I click here, I click on the Visibility State, I want that to be a Front View and if I zoom in there and get that grip, which is there, I can just drop that up there and then hit Escape to deselect that one. If I click on this one now, zoom in and what I want there now is the Visibility State, so I just zoom in, click there, I want the Side View now. If I come out a little you can see there I've got the grip there. What I'm going to do is just hit Escape there, select it, right-click, Move. I've got my line there so if I line in now and just hover - I can use my Polar Tracking and Object Snap Tracking to get this exact. I hover there and I hover there on the Endpoints and get that into section there. It's got a curved edge, remember, so I need to line it in with that wall. So now when I drop it there, look, that lines in exactly by utilizing Object Snap Tracking and my Polar Tracking. So as you can see there, with Visibility States in a Dynamic Block I've brought in 3 views of the same Dynamic Block, but I can just click there now and I can click now on the little arrow there, like so and I can decide on which one I want, so I hover there, click on the Visibility State and I've got Plan, Side, or Front. So if I change that to Front now, looks a bit weird in the Plan View, but you get the idea. So with the Visibility States there you can have three views of the same Block. I've got Front, Front and Side, or if I change that again I can go back in here, zoom in real tight, click on my Visibility State here, change that to Plan again and because of the way the Block is set up it's in Plan, Front and Side View. So, Visibility States are like a bucket of different blocks all being visible at different times. What we'll do is we'll work through this part of the course to show you how to create Visibility States in Dynamic Blocks.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Autodesk AutoCAD: Dynamic Blocks and Tool Palettes |
| Author: | Shaun Bryant |
| SKU: | 34055 |
| ISBN: | |
| Release Date: | 2009-11-13 |
| Duration: | 6.5 hrs / 85 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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