Using attributes as “Hidden Markers”

[mdonovanPPE]

I manage the autocad template for a mid-sized engineering firm with many junior engineers and few very busy senior engineers. To make life easier for those who review drawings, I’ve built in what I call “markers” into the details. The standard details are all made as blocks, and engineers who need to modify the blocks typically explode then modify. We would like the reviewers to quickly and easily know if what they are looking at is a standard detail or a modified detail. That’s the purpose of the “marker”. 

The method I am using for a “marker” is to tuck a small text attribute in the corner of the detail block, and use different tag, default, and prompt values for the attribute. When the block is exploded the value changes and this is a cue to the reviewer (who is reviewing the printed version in PDF) that the standard detail has been modified and they need to pay closer attention. 

The method works well when people use the EXPLODE command but does not work when people use the BURST command. I didn’t even know about BURST until recently, but it’s useful for other applications and people are starting to use it a lot and accidentally circumventing our system.

Does anyone have a suggestion for how I can leave “marker” in my block definitions that changes value or appearance when a block has been EXPLODED or BURST? 

[h_s_walker · Accepted solution]

When Exploding / Bursting the block do they change the resulting objects layers?

You can set the colour of all of the objects in the block to BYLAYER apart from one and leave that as BYBLOCK. Then if they change the layers of all the objects all of them will take on the colour of the layer apart from the one which is set as BYBLOCK as that will stay white / black.

[mdonovanPPE]

That basically worked.  I needed to use two different markers to make it work for both Burst and Explode, but the _BY BLOCK colors are what made it possible.  Thanks for the suggestion.