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XCLIP on standard Blocks - Why?

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Message 1 of 5
FitzUS
494 Views, 4 Replies

XCLIP on standard Blocks - Why?

I work for the development team of a property owner.  I receive lots of drawing from various architects and designers that we use as our database. 

 

I've noticed many drawings where blocks in a drawing have a clipping frame around them.  Sometimes I see this and I understand why because the user wants to use the same block but slightly modified area. (Such as a typical hotel room/office, etc)  Although I still think this is a bad way to create drawings as it can easily lead to misinformation if you are trying to draw data from drawings such as room counts.

 

But I often see them showing up on blocks where the clipping frame is way beyond the extents of the objects themselves, such as doors and toilets with clipframes that are 200 feet across.  What is the point of that?  I would often inadvertantly select the clipframe until I learned to set FRAMESELECTION to 0

 

I will be writing process standards for our company and I'm tempted to "ban" this practice unless I can see a way they could be useful.  How do people find this technique productive?

 

Thanks,

 

 

4 REPLIES 4
Message 2 of 5
pkolarik
in reply to: FitzUS

Using xclip on blocks? I do it from time to time when I have a dynamic block behind another object and want a piece clipped out. Or if I have a complicated piece of equipment (like a pump or a generator, etc) shown on a drawing that I want to stay as a block (because they typically get moved around alot during design) but still want to clip it out when pipes go over it, etc.

Message 3 of 5
FitzUS
in reply to: pkolarik

That sounds reasonable.

 

Often I get xclips that are so large they have no relation to the block.  The boundaries become annoying and can be easily selected accidentally.

 

 

Message 4 of 5
pkolarik
in reply to: FitzUS

Turn off the boundary. There's a "switch" for that. "XCLIPFRAMETOGGLE" will toggle the boundary on/off for visibility. Set that to "0" to make them invisible. Once that's done, there's the variable "FRAMESELECTION". Setting this to "0" makes it so hidden frames cannot be selected. A setting of "1" will allow you to select hidden frames.

 

We typically run with both of those set to "0". I'll turn on the "XCLIPFRAMETOGGLE" switch every now and then if I want to grip-edit the clipping boundary of an already clipped block/xref tho, and then turn it back off immediately afterward.

Message 5 of 5
Gary_J_Orr
in reply to: FitzUS


@FitzUS wrote:

That sounds reasonable.

 

Often I get xclips that are so large they have no relation to the block.  The boundaries become annoying and can be easily selected accidentally.

 

 


That is the result of bad drafting practices, pure and simple... they may have needed it at some point (there are many reasons for doing so as other posters have mentioned, even you yourself in your original post), but their settings have the boundaries hidden and they simply never take the time to perform any cleanup or maintenance on their drawings...

It's simply sloppy practice and should be addressed, but to "ban" their use outright could cause them to have to resort to other methods that might cause even more issues (such as having to create a dozen different block definitions when one would serve and perhaps is tied to scheduling/reporting tables and/or exploding blocks and losing any such information)

 

That's my 2cents

 

-Gary

Gary J. Orr
(Your Friendly Neighborhood) CADD/BIM/VDC Applications Manager
http://www.linkedin.com/in/garyorr

aka (current and past user names):
Gary_J_Orr (GOMO Stuff 2008-Present); OrrG (Forum Studio 2005-2008); Gary J. Orr (LHB Inc 2002-2005); Orr, Gary J. (Gossen Livingston 1997-2002)

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