Do not judge a book by its cover or an AutoCAD drawing at face value! Working with someone else's drawings, especially detailed ones, creates a hidden world that the CAD user must be aware of.
AutoCAD users commonly get drawings from external sources. Vendor drawings and customer-supplied drawings can both be challenging to work with. A very detailed drawing of a product is sometimes the only one available unless you create your own. In the interest of time, I will often use a copy of a vendor's drawing for my work rather than make it from scratch.
In the screenshot below, I have a drawing of a contactor assembly. On the surface, it looks clean and easy to work with. The reality is very different.
I have selected the entities to move them in my drawing.
You will see over 1200 individual entities contained therein! Miss a few line segments or other items, and you will have to do cleanup work. When selecting things to move in the example below, I have missed a few pieces of the puzzle.
There is an effortless way to avoid this from happening. By selecting the command shown below, you can eliminate this issue. It is a win-win for the AutoCAD user. By defining a logical insert point for the drawing, life is made much more manageable.
After selecting a base point and the desired items, the result is a copy of your selection on the clipboard with the desired insertion point. It will still be individual entities, however. Select the command below to insert a blocked copy of the entity using your specific insertion point.
You will now see the items as one entity that is easily managed!
Side notes:
1. Any original layer and line type data will remain in the resulting block.
2. The resulting block may be edited like any other block.
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