topic Re: How to edit multiple blocks in AutoCAD Forum

How to edit multiple blocks

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 10:42:32 GMT

Hello everyone, so I have an old technical building plan drawing and I need to prepare it for publication, I need to make it easy readable for everyone. The drawing contains maybe several hundreds of different blocks, what I want to do is to set all of those blocks line colors, line weights and line types BYLAYER, and then move those lines to one or several my own created layers, so i then could easily manipulate all of the block lines at once (by just playing with layer properties) and see what suits best and not to go one by one to each block. Any ideas how i could do it? Cheers.

Re: How to edit multiple blocks

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 11:02:21 GMT

I attach a picture of the plan and a list of many many blocks... But basically there are just maybe 200 doors and each is as a different block. And there are maybe 500 hundred of different blocks if not more.. The wished end result is that all the lines in drawing and in the blocks would be set BYLAYER and i would have like ~5 different layers with different layer properties, like one is darker, another is thicker, so yeah. I hope you get the hook on what i want to do

Re: How to edit multiple blocks

Alfred.NESWADBA — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 11:04:12 GMT

Hi,

>> set all of those blocks line colors, line weights

>> and line types BYLAYER

You can use command _SETBYLAYER to get that done.

>> and then move those lines to one or several my own created layers

Not sure how that could be done automatically as I see no rule for the system to know which line in the blockdefinition should be moved to which layer...

- alfred -

Re: How to edit multiple blocks

RobDraw — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 11:18:02 GMT

As @Alfred.NESWADBA stated, SETBYLAYER will get you started.

If the blocks are constructed in a consistent and logical way, merging layers might help out with the second part.

No matter what you do, you will probably wind up editing many or all of the blocks definitions individually.

Re: How to edit multiple blocks

Alfred.NESWADBA — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 11:34:07 GMT

Hi,

>> And there are maybe 500 hundred of different blocks if not more..

Have not seen the screenshot before (our posts crossed).

Now seeing your block-names ... are you sure that they are all different? I guess many blocks are the same and only have different block-names because an interface from a none AutoCAD CAD-application wrote it that way.

In that case it first makes more sense to exchange the block-insertions that are equal to be based on the same block-defintion.

- alfred -

Re: How to edit multiple blocks

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 14:58:05 GMT

Thank you @Alfred.NESWADBA and @RobDraw, your ideas were useful.

Re: How to edit multiple blocks

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Oct 2020 09:15:12 GMT

Hello,

lukasinica I searched for a solution that help me to clean faster architectural plans and change color to 252, for example, for all objects at the same time.
I tried setbylayer command but this didn't change color when I selected all objects and changed color to all at once, from color control drop down box.
So I thought that I need to convert all blocks to byBlock. And I found that it is no simple solution for this.
Finally helped me setbylayer, but after setting color with this command, I selected all layers and changed color to all at the same time to 252, an that worked like magic.

Re: How to edit multiple blocks

bart_korolN5S58 — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 13:54:44 GMT

Currently using Autocad 2024 - command worked like a charm, thank you very much for this, great tool to have when creating library or adjusting older libraries of blocks to new layers. Cheers!

Re: How to edit multiple blocks

alejandro_fonseca01 — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 15:42:28 GMT

@Alfred.NESWADBA and @RobDraw , I ran into the same problem, both gave great recommendations and save me a ton of time. I appreciate your help.