Autodesk AutoCAD: Dynamic Blocks and Tool Palettes Course

Welcome to Part 1 of the Introduction to the AutoCAD Dynamic Blocks and Tool Palettes course. Now I'm going to be using for the duration of this course AutoCAD 2010. That's because it is the most current version of AutoCAD. However, a lot of these exercises and applications will apply to previous versions of AutoCAD as well. Dynamic Blocks, for example, came into being with AutoCAD 2006 so you should have a current version of AutoCAD that is AutoCAD 2006 and above to be able to utilize Dynamic Blocks. Now Part 1 of this Introduction is What is a dynamic block? Well, let's have a look at a standard AutoCAD block first. You'll notice in this drawing, Space Planner Blocks-METRIC, I've also provided Space Planner Blocks-IMPERIAL in the Work Files for those of you that use Imperial units as well. Now we're going to look here at these blocks here. There's a chair and a standard lamp. Let's zoom in using the wheel on our mouse and I'm just going to pan a little there. If I click on that block there, as you can see I hover over it, you can see it's all one object. I click on it. If I click on that grip you can see it's a block. I'm moving this around as one object, so it's a lamp, it's a lamp block. If I just hit Escape there to deselect that lamp and select the chair, now you'll see some other tools available, not just the default insertion grip there. Now if I click here that is actually a flip action on a Dynamic Block. I'll just pan down a little and click on that flip action and look, it flips the chair for me. If I click on this flip action, it flips the chair again in the opposing direction. So I can keep flipping away here and that chair goes back to its original position. I don't have to use the Mirror Command. Those flips are built into the Block. That makes it a Dynamic Block. Now those tools in that Block are built using parameters and actions that we'll cover further on in the course. Notice it's very different to this block here. Now obviously flipping a circular standard lamp is not going to make a lot of difference; it's circular, so I would move that around like so and place it where I need it to go. But, what about something like this? Look, we've got a unit here, if I click there it's got the one grip. Now I can just click on the grip there, right-click and I can mirror it there if I want to about that grip, but it means I've got to go into Grip Editing. If I wanted to actually mirror that I'd have to go into Grip Editing, Mirror it, select the two points at the mirror line and so on. With the chair there I just click, I just click. You can see how quick and effective that is. That's why Dynamic Blocks are so useful because they've got tools in there that are built in that allow you to work with the Block rather than have to keep going to all the Edit Tools in AutoCAD. So, I'll just quickly flip that back down again and it's back to its original position. Now Dynamic Blocks don't just have flip parameters and move parameters and so on. They have things like Visibility States as well. Let's just pan across. See this conference table here on the left? Just zoom in a little so that you can see it. If I click on that you'll see not only have I got the insertion point grip there, I've got this funny little down arrow here. If I click on that it gives me a menu. It gives me three different types of conference table. Now the one ticked at the moment is the 10-seater, so if I just hit Escape a couple of times there we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten seats available. Now wouldn't it be nice though if I just clicked there, click on the arrow and I want six seats. Look how quick and easy that is. No stretch, no edit. If I want 8 seats I just click on 8 seats and again the Visibility States there allow me to pick which instance of that Block family I want to use. I've got three Blocks in there basically - a 6-seater, an 8-seater and a 10-seater, but they're all built in to the one Dynamic Block using Visibility States. So, as you can see, Dynamic Blocks are extremely useful tools in AutoCAD. They make you more productive, they make you more accessible by way of providing blocks that actually work; they're not just single blocks that you move, mirror, rotate, stretch. Visibility States, like I've shown you, it's so quick and easy. So Dynamic Blocks will always be an effective drafting tool. What we need to do now in this course is to teach you how to use them effective and productively in your line of work.  

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