Subtitles of the Movie

As you can see in our Title Block now I've added the other two Attributes CHECK and APPROVE there. Now the one thing you'll notice is we still have our Nodes there. Now what I would do is I would actually delete those now if I was going to convert to a Block, basically because they create extra objects in the Block that we don't actually need because we've now finished our design of our Title Block. So, what we need to do is just zoom in quickly and click on each Node like so and delete them. So, using zoom and pan get rid of our Nodes now. Make sure you don't delete the Attributes. Very important that you click on the Nodes only. Can you see that? And then delete and I'll pan up and there's my last Node there; I'll delete that one as well. Zoom Extents now and there we go. Our Title Block now is ready to become an AutoCAD Block. Now there's a nice little variable in AutoCAD that we can switch on here that will actually give us a dialog box when we insert the Block into the drawing. Now, it's called ATTDIA - Attribute Dialog it stands for - press Enter. If it's set to zero it means that you won't get a dialog box, OK? If you set it to 1 there and press Enter it means you will get a dialog box appearing on the screen when you enter the Block into the drawing. So let's make this into a Block now within our drawing. We can obviously send this out as a separate Block later on, but let's look at just using it as a Block within this drawing right now. So, roll back on the wheel mouse a notch, something like that, so that you can actually select everything when you turn it into a Block. Now I've got 14 saving as a Block as my drawing. What you'll find is I'll make sure that this drawing is saved in your Work Files for you, so this Block will already be in there so if you do need to create a Block you will need to rename it as a different Block name because you can't have two blocks the same name. OK. We go to our Insert Tab on the Ribbon and there's our Block Panel there and we go to Create Block. The Create Block command is on the Draw Toolbar in older versions of AutoCAD. So I click on Create and the Block name - I'm going to call it A3 Title and then -Landscape, because it's in a Landscape format. So, A3 Title-Landscape. Now, lots of information on the Block Definition dialog box. The first thing we're going to do: Base point here. Click on the Pick point Icon here - it takes us into the drawing. So since we click on Pick point it'll take us into the drawing and it'll ask us Specify insertion base point. Use your Object Snaps and get that Endpoint there. Not this one here, but right on the edge there, the 0,0 that we set up earlier. You'll see that that is actually 0,0 anyway when you click on it. No problems there. Moving along to the Objects area now of the dialog, we need to select the objects that are going to make up our Block. So we click on this Icon here: Select objects. Again, crossing or window selection to select absolutely everything like so. Right-click to confirm and that will take you back to the dialog. I've actually got 20 objects there. So if you've drawn it the same as me you should have 20 as well. If you've got a few more or a few less just do a quick check to make sure you've selected everything. Now we've got three options: Retain, Convert to block, or Delete. I'm actually going to delete the original objects there and there's a reason for that because I'm going to show you how to insert the block into the drawing once we've created it. So select Delete. It's not going to be Annotative, however, we are going to Scale uniformly in the X and Y directions if we Scale it and also Allow Exploding, that way you can explode your original block back into its original objects, maybe make a few changes and save it as a different Block. I always allow Exploding in my Blocks. That's my personal preference. Block unit will be Millimeters here because we're working in a metric millimeters drawing. Open in Block Editor - don't need. Make sure it's unticked. We then click on OK. Everything will disappear. Don't worry, you haven't deleted it at all. What you've done there is you've basically put that Block into your drawing. Go and save your drawing quickly so that that Block is now in the drawing database. Go to your Home Tab here, like so, make sure you're on your TITLEBLOCK Layer. Now because we created our Block on Layer0 when we bring it into the drawing it will adopt the properties of the Current Layer, so we now need to insert our Block into our drawing. Now the good thing is, on the Home Tab I've also got Block and Insert. Insert Block is on the Draw Toolbar of older versions of AutoCAD. So I click on Insert and there's my A3 Title-Landscape Block. It'll be the only Block in this drawing I hope. Insertion point - We'll specify that on the screen, no need. We want it to be 0,0 so make sure X, Y and Zed are set to zero. Scale there will be 1, because obviously it's a uniform scale, one to one, everything needs to be full size. Rotation Angle zero. We want it horizontal, don't we? So when I click on OK now it'll bring my Block in and there's my Attribute dialog box. That ATTDIA variable that we set to 1 is now asking me Approved by, Checked by, Drawn by. So, Drawn by, I'll put my initials in there; Checked by, I'll put my wife's initials in there; and Approved by, let's say my dad's initials, something like that. I'm just throwing initials in there. You'd obviously use the initials of the people that were actually doing the work not obviously relatives like I have. Click on OK. That information goes into the drawing there. There's my Attributes just there, you can see that and it's all come in on the Title Block Layer because we created the original Block on Layer0. However, if I hover over those attributes now and double-click I get the Enhanced Attribute Editor of AutoCAD. It knows their attributes so I can go in and check them using the dialog like so. I can work with Text Options and also Properties if I need to. I'm not going to change them, so I'll just hit Cancel. I'll do a Zoom Extents there. So there's our Title Block ready to go. What I would then do is save my drawing, create my Viewports, add any more information to the drawing that I need and start doing my designs in the Model Tab. So that's how you save your Title Block as a Block.