Summary

Blocks are a very powerful feature of AutoCAD. This chapter has shown you how to extract the power of blocks by explaining the nature of blocks. You learned what happens to AutoCAD’s database when a block is defined and how the current UCS affects a block when it’s being defined or inserted. You learned how AutoCAD stores a block definition in the Block Table and how it references the Block Table to create the Insert object. You saw the effects of defining blocks on a normal layer and on layer 0 and the difference between explicitly and implicitly defining the color, linetype, and lineweight properties of a block. This chapter also outlined the advantages of creating complex blocks from simpler blocks and the steps for redefining nested blocks with the -INSERT command. In addition, it presented several techniques for managing block libraries.