topic Re: Edit properties field (transparency to ByBlock) in all nested blocks? in AutoCAD Forum

Edit properties field (transparency to ByBlock) in all nested blocks?

Anonymous — Sat, 14 Apr 2018 12:48:04 GMT

I am using AutoCAD 2019 running on a i9-7820X with 32GB DDR4.

I have a pretty complex drawing made of blocks and nested blocks inside them (3 levels), that consists of 4 elevation views of a building in process of design. And I need to create another block with the blocks of each elevation view inside it, and get 2 copies, one with 0% transparency (elevation view at front) and anoher one with 60% transparency (elevation proyection at back).

I know I can achieve it by 2 ways, being the fastest one to create an xref of the drawing, giving it a sufix at the end, and import it to the original drawing and giving 60% transparency to all the xref layers, so I end with:

elevation_front_XXX (0% transparency)

elevation_back_XXX (60% transparency)

This way, the drawing gets too slow to manipulate it as per each elevation I have to delimit the xref to one elevation view, resulting in 4 xref containing each 4 elevations (16 elevation views, plus the original 4 views, 20 views in total)

The other way is to change all the "transparency" field of the objets (blocks, nested blocks, lines, polylines...) to "ByBlock", and create one Block with 0% transparency (elevation front) and another one with 60% transparency (elevation back). This way I only have 4 original elevation views and 4 back elevation views. But the problem is that I have around 1000 blocks, counting all the nested ones, and I will need several weeks to change the "transparency" field to ByBlock in all the blocks.

Is there an automated way to edit the transparency field to "ByBlock" in all the nested blocks without editing them one by one? Or a better way to achieve what I need?

Thanks in advance.

Re: Edit properties field (transparency to ByBlock) in all nested blocks?

john.vellek — Wed, 05 Sep 2018 22:13:14 GMT

Hi @Anonymous,

I am sorry for my delayed response as I just found your post. I assume by now you have figured out a method to get the project out the door but I thought i would offer some thoughts just in case.

My first thought is to consider using some xrefs so you can more easily control the transparency.

I also suggest that you peruse the Autodesk App Store as there are a lot of add-ins and utilities for blocks and perhaps there is something that can help programmatically control some properties of the geometry in your blocks.

Please select the Accept as Solution button if my post solves your issue or answers your question.

Re: Edit properties field (transparency to ByBlock) in all nested blocks?

MMcCall402 — Thu, 06 Sep 2018 02:23:56 GMT

Layer Transparency can be set at the viewport level. Its one of the viewport override abilities in addition to things like color, linetype and line width. So, you can make two viewports of the same objects and display them with a transparency of 0 in one viewport and 60 in the other.

Note, the layer manager will show these additional columns when you're in an active viewport.