Annotative Dynamic Blocks

[Anonymous]

Hello,

     I have been creating several annotative dynamic blocks recently, such as note bubbles, wall types, detail bubbles etc etc, and have been consistently encountering the same issue with each block.  The blocks function correctly in that they scale properly and display fine in each viewport and at any scale.  However, the problem I am finding is that when I use various actions within the block editor to manipulate the lengths and positions of leaders, lines, and such they apply to all scales.  That is, if I have a note bubble at 1:5, 1:20, and 1:100, if I change the length or position of a point on the line or leader in order to better fit the block within the viewport, since at 1:100 the blocks will be more crowded together, it will change similarly for all 3 scales.  Even though the block in the 1:5 and 1:20 viewports fits fine, if I need to move the 1:100 scaled version up a bit and adjust the arrowhead accordingly, the arrowhead will make the same change for the other scales, which I do not want.  What I find odd as well, is that if you simply draw a leader outside of an annotative dynamic block, and make the leader annotative at 1:5, 1:20, and 1:100, you can actually have the arrowhead pointing in 3 different directions (differently at each scale) which is perfect.  But.....as soon as you place that same arrowhead inside of an annotative block, it seems to lose that functionality.

     I have been searching this and other forums for the past few weeks and have been unable to find others encountering the same problem.  I thought perhaps the visibility function in the block editor may have something to do with this but after testing this I believe not afterall.

Thank you for any help.

[Anonymous]

Hello,

     I have been creating several annotative dynamic blocks recently, such as note bubbles, wall types, detail bubbles etc etc, and have been consistently encountering the same issue with each block.  The blocks function correctly in that they scale properly and display fine in each viewport and at any scale.  However, the problem I am finding is that when I use various actions within the block editor to manipulate the lengths and positions of leaders, lines, and such they apply to all scales.  That is, if I have a note bubble at 1:5, 1:20, and 1:100, if I change the length or position of a point on the line or leader in order to better fit the block within the viewport, since at 1:100 the blocks will be more crowded together, it will change similarly for all 3 scales.  Even though the block in the 1:5 and 1:20 viewports fits fine, if I need to move the 1:100 scaled version up a bit and adjust the arrowhead accordingly, the arrowhead will make the same change for the other scales, which I do not want.  What I find odd as well, is that if you simply draw a leader outside of an annotative dynamic block, and make the leader annotative at 1:5, 1:20, and 1:100, you can actually have the arrowhead pointing in 3 different directions (differently at each scale) which is perfect.  But.....as soon as you place that same arrowhead inside of an annotative block, it seems to lose that functionality.

     I have been searching this and other forums for the past few weeks and have been unable to find others encountering the same problem.  I thought perhaps the visibility function in the block editor may have something to do with this but after testing this I believe not afterall.

Thank you for any help.

[ojuris]

could You show the block?

[Anonymous]

Sure, I've attached an example here.  There is a leader set to three annotative scales (1:1, 1:2, 1:5) with a different orientation for each scale.  It seems simple enough, I just change the visible scale in modelspace, move the leader's head for each scale, and then there are three unique orientations.  So then once I have three viewports in paperspace each at a different scale, I am able to move the leader's head accordingly to suit each viewport.  This seems to work fine.

However, once I make an annotative block with a leader within it, the leader no longer behaves in this way.  If you select the block I created you will see that if you change the locations of the leader's points at one scale, they make the same movements at the other scales as well.  This unfortunately is not preferable in my case; we would much prefer to have the leader perform in the same way as if it were not in a block, as this causes problems once you use multiple scales.

Hopefully the file helps in explaining the issue, thanks.

[Anonymous]

Befor answering your question i have one of my one:

Do you insert your blocks from the tools pallet or do you use the insertion command?

Regards

Thomas

[Anonymous]

I either go to insert > block or just use the "insert" command.  I haven't heard of inserting a block through the "tools" menu, if that's an alternate method you mean.  Although I do use the "Block Editor" command under the "Tools" menu.

[Anonymous]

You can insert your blocks whit a tools pallet (you can find it in the vieuw tap and should defently whach some youtube about it).

Here you can let your blocks explode when they are inserted.

So this way you can insert a leader as a block but have it exploded so it behaves like a normal multileader.

Regards

Thomas

[Anonymous]

If I understand you correctly, you're suggesting that I simply explode the blocks once I have them set to the scale and orientation I would like.  This however, would defeat the purpose of making the blocks annotative in the first place, as once I explode the blocks they then would lose their annotative capability and I would need to copy and scale the same block multiple times for it to be visible at different scales.  Not to mention I would have to place each block on its own layer so that I could freeze them in the viewports where they are unwanted.  The whole idea of using annotative blocks, text, dimensions etc is that you only need to use one object for many scales.  Compared to the old method of using multiple versions of the same block, each on their own layer.

Thank you, but if this is not quite what you meant then please clarify.

[Anonymous]

The only reason that i made this sugestion whas because as far as i know you can't make a leader in a dynamic block. So for leaders I simply use leaders. But I insert them from the tools pallet so that some things like layer and color are olready set. 

An alternative is to simply add a movement parameter to your block that only moves the text.

This comes a litle closer to a leader block.

Regards

Thomas

[Anonymous]

Hmm ok, well that may explain then why I haven't yet been able to find mention of leaders within annotative blocks, and really just more complex annotative blocks in general.  Perhaps we just aren't able to create blocks with this kind of functionality in ACAD, although I still find this difficult to believe.  I can't see them adding this annotative capability and then not predict that the public would want to use annotative blocks in this way and for these reasons, seems very short-sighted.  There must be some way to find the results I'm looking for, but again, as you have suggested and I have failed to find evidence proving otherwise, maybe we in fact can't use proper leaders within annotative blocks.  What a shame; I'll keep searching though.  Thanks for your help.

[Anonymous]

Here i would like to make a few comments on your response, I am posting this because it is the way i see dynamic blocks. And i personaly find this way of looking at it easyer to understand what you can and cannot do whit them.

Dynamic blocks give you the posibility to add grip points to drawings the same way they are added to lines, circles,... . But the set of actions we are alowed to use is quite limmited. Especialy when it comes to working whit text. Therefor it is more oportune to work whit the block created by autocad designers (I mean real leaders or dimensions) when you need them. 

This is why whit stretching, rotatingn scaling or using different scales dynamic blocks and text whont change the way you want it to.

Hope this makes any sense. If you do happen to find a solution don't hesitate to prove me wrong

Regards

thomas

[Anonymous]

Yep, it definitely makes sense, and in fact when I first attempted to make my own annotative blocks several months ago I too chose to make them as you have explained.  I created the blocks I wanted without using any leaders, and I would later then simply draw a leader beside the block to be used in conjunction with it.  One of the problems I was finding though, was that occasionally I would open a file one morning, after having worked with it the previous day and the blocks worked fine, only to find that the blocks and more specifically the leaders would have apparantly moved of their own accord.  Suddenly the leaders would have shifted way off to the middle of nowhere in modelspace.  I couldn't determine why this had happened; all of the insertion points were set to 0,0, the blocks had not been exploded nor manipulated in any other way, no one else worked on the files overnight, yet somehow inexplicably the leaders had moved.  This was one reason why I wanted to create annotative blocks with leaders inside of them, to try to prevent them from being subject to CAD's weirdness/bugs.  Another side-effect of having the leaders separate from the blocks is that once you set the blocks to different scales, you still must tweak the leaders so that they appear visually correct when positioned beside the block.  As in you still must move each grip point of the leader to meet a note bubble at a 90 degree angle for example, correct any overlaps or gaps between the leader's end and the block's edge, like the point where you want the leader to originate from.  I was hoping that by creating annotative dynamic blocks I would be able to save time through not having to waste time making small adjustments like those.

But oh well, I'll keep trying, and if I happen to learn anything or find a solution I'll make sure to post it back on these discussion groups.  Thanks again.

[Anonymous]

if you want to dabble with VB.NET you can make a "dynamic" leader within your dynamic block. Its not a slick as having an actual dynamic multileader embedded in your block, but still can be useful.

I did this with a few blocks. I have a form where one inputs some parameter values to drive the geometry of what the block is supposed to be showing, along with the plot scale. This value is used to programmatically scale the geometry that mimics a multileader. This geomtry is grip editable as any other in a dynamic block & works like a multileader.

In one block, I have 2 of my  "multileaders" controlled by different plot scale parameters on the form, because sometimes the label needs to show in  a large scale viewport & also in a small scale viewport w/in the same project.

[Anonymous]

Sounds interesting, I don't have very much experience with programming but if it's not overly difficult it may be something I can manage.  Would you be able to attach an example of the mulit-leaders you're describing, or would I also need to run some plug-in or include coding in order for the blocks to function as intended?  Also, if I used visual basic coding to create some blocks in CAD, would other users on the same network in the office be able to use those same blocks correctly or would they also requre some other software/coding on their computers to run the blocks?

Thanks

[Anonymous]

vb.net has a rather steep learning curve. VBA was much easier (but not being supported anymore (or is it ?)). Manipulating dynamic blocks isn't all that difficult after getting to the point of being able to use vb.net.

If all you plan on doing is implementing this one thing, not worth the effort. I've done some pretty cool stuff with vb.netj & I'm sure many people to extraordinary things with it.

Certain aspects of my particular blocks require the code to run, such as scaling the "multileader", with the other parameters, the routine makes it easier to use (or even possible to practically use), due to the newbie way I created the block ( I didn't realize that there was a symmetric constraint which might have eliminated some of the complexity (not that it is all that complex)).  Aside from that, the program actually does some calculations based on the input from the form to size things appropriately. The intent is that the block is always at a scale of 1, so that the geometry is always actual size & the "multileaders" get scaled programmatically.

Where I work, everyone has access to my vb.net programs & they are "demand loaded" via a LSP routine.

The routine only changes the block when someone needs to change it. If it doesn't need to change, there is no need to use the routine.

I'll attach a block so that you can at least see how that got set up.

It might be a bit tedious, but you could use visibility states for common viewport scales & have various copies of the "multileader" geometry show up appropriately in those states.

One problem that no one on the forums could solve is that the flip state of the "multileader" moves one of the move grips a little bit.

In case anyone is curious, the block contains attributes to store certain parameters that the controlling routine reads from to populate the form with the current values & to test if the block is the appropriate one (type) to edit, & writes to using the new values the user entered into the form.

[Anonymous]

here is a screen shot of the form used to control that block

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the example and explanation, but I agree as you suggest that for relatively small and simple blocks it would not quite be worth the effort to produce them in this way.  I can see though how for complex blocks it could be useful.

Hopefully the developers will just be able to implement more functionality with annotative blocks in the future and allow them to gain more of the benefits of non-annotative dynamic blocks.

[Anonymous]

Can someone please tell me why my dynamic annotative block moves positions in my viewport when scaled to a different xp?

[Anonymous]

My thinking is that you probably used the "stretch" command while in a viewport.  If you want to change the location of an annotative block and use the "move" command it will move the block at all of its scales simultaneously.  If however, you use the "stretch" command CAD will only move the block's currently active scale while leaving all of the other scales untouched.  It's also important to note that if you click on a block's insertion point or other nodes and then simply move it with your cursor and without any other commands, CAD treats this action the same as though you used the "stretch" command.

So if you want to move a block and all of its different scales together, use the "move" command.  If you want to move a block and/or its nodes for only one specific scale then either use the "stretch" command or select and move a node with your cursor.

Hope this helps.

[Anonymous]

THANKS. LET ME TRY

Joseph Szymanski
CAD Technician
Securadyne Systems
1502 N 9th Avenue
Pensacola, Florida 32503

Main Office: 888.409.2224
joseph.szymanski@securadyne.com

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