If you wish to change one copy, or instance, of a block, use the EXPLODE command to break it into its component parts, then use standard AutoCAD drawing and editing commands to make the change.
If you wish to change every occurrence of a block in a drawing, you can use the REFEDIT command to make the change to one block. The other instances of it will update. If you want to change just one occurrence of a block in a scene, use the EXPLODE command to un-block it, then make the desired changes.
- Tip:
You can now create "dynamic" blocks in AutoCAD. Dynamic blocks let you type in dimension values to resize blocks, which means instead of creating a dozen sizes of a window you can create just one that changes sizes as required. We don't cover that set of tools in this exercise, but you need to know about it. You use the BEDIT command to create dynamic blocks.
In this lesson you use the REFEDIT command to change the every bed in the scene.
- From the Standard toolbar, choose Zoom Window.
- Select two points to create a window around the two beds.
- From the Tools menu, choose Xref & Block In-Place Editing, then choose Edit Reference in place.
- Select one of the blocks.
- Choose OK to indicate that you want to edit this block.
- Modify the block by moving geometry.
- Draw a new line on the bed.
- Choose the Save Reference Edits icon to save your changes.
- Choose OK to approve the change. Note that all occurrences of the Bed block were updated to reflect your changes.
- Tip:
If you use the EXPLODE command to break a block into its component parts, the components return to the layer on which they were created.
