Dynamic Blocks

[#1]

I have a library of dynamic blocks that we use for various systems. Each dynamic block has roughly 50-100 visibility states. Sometimes I need to use previous drawings for a new phase of work and the symbols that were previously new are now existing and need  to have the letter "E" next to it to indicate as existing.

Currently I have duplicate dynamic blocks for "existing" and "re-located" blocks. This seems redundant and would be much more logical to select a number of devices and simply change a visibility to either new, existing, or re-located. However, I cannot think of how to do this unless either with an attribute or a second visibility pulldown.

Any ideas???

Oh and without having a visbility state list 500 miles long...

[#2]

Hi. I have a few ideas for this. You can nest visual states within other visual states by using a lookup table (which you can have as many as you wish). You would create all the views (and even the lookup parameters - just give them a dummy placeholder text value until all your views get fully defined). Then once you have all the views, go into each lookup table and add the correct (sub)views for that branch. I've attached a file that I did this with.

Maybe an additional tool you can try is to integrate layering or color "byBlock" with your views. I haven't got an example of that though.

Finally, if you are brave, you can try Andrey Lazebny's "Visibility-Add_eng.lsp" Look it up here in the fourm. I've been using it now for a few months and have created about a hundred blocks with it. It is a challenge to learn, but once you figure it out you can in fact create multiple visibility parameters which each handle their own entity set and you can turn them on and off with their respective visibility grips. I'll include some of those too.

HTH

Ron