Isolating an atributed autocad block by using fabrication isolation tool.

[Anonymous]

A user used the fabrication isolation tool to isolate an Autocad block with attributes. Using quick select we know the blocks are there, but are not visible. We have tried a showall, show in viewport, unisolate, layer states, and can not figure this one out. Any ideas? I slapped the guy who did this to make sure he doesn't do this again to save future issues.

[davidronson]

"I slapped the guy who did this to make sure he doesn't do this again"   HaHa Thats a great visual. Thanks for the chuckle! 

I just duplicated those steps and SHOWALL seemed to work fine for me. 

[Anonymous]

I think it may have had something to do with layer states, but the way I fixed it was to copy the invisible blocks out to a blank drawing then use laythw and layuniso to make them show up. Later deleted the original blocks out of the drawing then pasted the new visible ones back in and solved the problem, and of course another slap. Not sure why it occurred the first time though.

[Anonymous]

Just to clarify....

There is absolutely no issues with isolating non-fabrication objects (of any kind) with the Maskview command. This command modifies the VISIBLE state which is a boolean true/false state that every object with a visual presence has; It doesn't get any simpler than that.

However, it gets a lot more complicated and mystical when talking about isolating within a given viewport, but only with regards to native Fabrication objects.

If i had to guess, i would bet money the blocks were isolated (had their VISIBLE state set to false) and then the layer they resided on was locked. In order to change an objects VISIBLE property, the object cannot be on a locked layer.