topic Re: Replace block in AutoCAD Forum

Replace block

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 06:17:35 GMT

Hello,

Here I have got some tough task, I have n number of blocks with unidentical names, I want to replace all those blocks with a newly created block. Could you please guide me to complete this task? TIA

Re: Replace block

ennujozlagam — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 06:36:16 GMT

@Anonymous hello.

Follow these steps:

Make sure that the new block you want to insert is defined in the drawing. ...
Choose Express> Blocks> Replace Block with Another Block or enter blockreplace on the command line.
In the BLOCKREPLACE dialog box, choose the block that you want to replace from the list of blocks in the drawing.

Re: Replace block

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 06:58:33 GMT

Thanks a lot.

I have a drawing with n number of blocks with unidentical names, here I want to replace all those blocks with a newly created block or rename all other blocks with the new name. Is there any possibility to do that??

If needed I can attach the drawing.

Re: Replace block

ennujozlagam — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 07:18:20 GMT

@Anonymous hello, you can try to check it <<click HERE>>. thanks

Re: Replace block

Kent1Cooper — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 13:41:44 GMT

Another one is BlockReplace.lsp, available here, with the BRS command it contains [= Block Replace, Selected]. It also has a BRA command [= Block Replace, All] in which you pick one insertion of the Block you want replaced, and it replaces all insertions of that Block with the specified replacement Block.

Re: Replace block

john.vellek — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 16:02:59 GMT

Hi @Anonymous,

I see that you are visiting as a new member. Welcome to the Autodesk Community!

If the great suggestions in this thread don't get your blocks replaced the way you want, please attach a sample file and I am happy to take a look if there is another way to do this.

Re: Replace block

Anonymous — Sun, 02 Jul 2017 13:30:38 GMT

Hello John,

Hereby I have attached the AutoCA drawing for you reference. In the attachment you can find two different types of blocks with nonidentical names. i just want to replace those blocks with new other two blocks.

Re: Replace block

Kent1Cooper — Sun, 02 Jul 2017 23:27:55 GMT

I think you're out of luck. There are close to 7,000 (!) Blocks in that drawing, apparently every one with its own separate Block name, every one inserted only once, and worst of all, every one defined with its insertion base point in the same place! So no Block's insertion point has any logical or repeatable relationship to its image elements.

Any routine designed to replace Blocks is going to keep their insertion points, scale factors and rotations as they are, and just put in a replacement Block of a different name, using all those properties. I Zoomed in arbitrarily and found a Block 6946 near a Block 6947, and used my BlockReplace.lsp routine's BRA command to replace "all" 6947's [there was only one] with 6946. It did, but the replacement 6946 Block was [as it should be] inserted at the same 0,0 insertion point and 1 scale factors and 0 rotation as the 6947 Block it replaced had, which means it came in sitting right on top of the other 6946 Block nearby [which shares all those properties, as do all the rest of the Blocks in the drawing], and not with the image elements where the 6947 Block was.

It looks like there may be only two shapes of image involved, but since there are literally thousands of each shape, with thousands of individual Block names, all sharing the same insertion point and therefore with a different relationship of its image elements to the insertion point from every other such Block, I am at a loss to imagine a way to automate replacing all those of one shape with one Block, and all those of the other shape with another Block -- you may be stuck with doing it manually and tediously.

One thing I thought might work, but didn't: Since the Blocks all have their insertion points at 0,0, I thought maybe an element in each [since they are "defined" in terms of locations in relation to the insertion base point ] could be used out in the overall drawing as the insertion point to place a different Block with a logical insertion point. But I tried one of the vertical-line-in-"parentheses" shapes, and got the location of the start point of the first element in it [a Polyline, I think the vertical middle line], and used that location as the start point of a Line. It didn't actually lie on the endpoint of any of the elements in that Block, so that wouldn't be a viable approach. That locational difference may be somehow because they are all so hugely far away from the origin.

Since the drawing was generated by some program other than AutoCAD [I was warned when opening it], can you go back to the source and see whether there are any option(s) as to how to turn it into an AutoCAD drawing, that might give you a better result for what you're trying to do?

Re: Replace block

Anonymous — Thu, 27 Jun 2019 11:57:10 GMT

blockreplace.lsp doesn't seem to work in 2019

Re: Replace block

cadffm — Thu, 27 Jun 2019 12:26:56 GMT

Nothing to do with the Version, but with your blocks.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/francais/ct-p/5054

The Adesk Express Blockreplace function is a very old dinosaur, it isn't the right tool for using with new features like dynamic blocks and annotation scales.

It works as designed, decades before

Re: Replace block

Josh-Riddell — Fri, 23 Jun 2023 17:24:28 GMT

Was having the same issue, and this helped much more than the built-in BLOCKREPLACE command, as the built-in command only gives a prompt to replace ALL instances of a block. This LISP command comes in really handy if you're trying to replace only a selection of blocks.

Thanks!