PaulTheCAD's Tips - Symbols and Blocks

While everyone knows about symbols, I still come across self-taught CAD users that do not understand blocks, so –

Symbols

A Symbol is an object or collection of objects that you have drawn, (or maybe brought in), that you decide that you might want to use again at some point, so, rather than redraw it each time, you put it into the Library to enable you at a later date to simply take it ‘off the shelf’ to use again. The only thing to remember is that when you put it into the Library, it is automatically grouped. When you take it out you can explode it. The Libraries are under TOOLS – Pallets – Library. Select the object, keep your finger down on the left hand side of the mouse and drag and drop into the Library. The entire library ‘collection’ is available to all drawings.

Blocks

The Blocks Library is found in the same area as Symbols and the objects are placed into it in exactly the same way. However there are differences. Firstly the Blocks are drawing specific, the blocks are saved within the drawing that you are working on. (They can be imported in, but look it up, if that’s what you want). Secondly, once you have created a Block of an object then all ‘copies’ of it in the drawing are looking at the object in the Blocks Library. Thirdly, because of the last point, if you chance the object in the Blocks Library then all the objects in you drawing will change. The bonus with that, apart from the obvious, is that it keeps you drawing size smaller than it would have been otherwise.

Paul Tracey