Edwin Prakoso has written an excellent and thorough e-book on AutoCAD blocks. In 69 pages, he covers the following:
- Creating, inserting, modifying, and replacing blocks
- Creating and using attributes
- Creating annotative blocks
- Creating dynamic blocks, including visibility states, parameters, and constraints
- Extracting data from blocks
- Best practices examples
- Managing and sharing blocks
The book is only $10 and he’s offering a 40% discount with the CN2010 code. It’s only good until December 31st, which is why I wanted to get this post out to you now. That makes the book only $6!
I suggest that you take a look by clicking this link. (Full disclosure: I make 30% commission.) He also has 2 e-books on Revit, if you’re interested.
I asked Edwin some questions to learn more about him and why he chose this topic:
Q1: Why did you decide to focus on AutoCAD blocks?
I believe that to be productive in AutoCAD, we need to focus on three areas: having good templates, good libraries, and good customizations. Customization need programming knowledge, and not many people can create a program. But AutoCAD blocks are quite simple to create.
I have seen that AutoCAD blocks today can be really useful, not only as reusable content, but also to automate some tasks. By optimizing blocks, we not only become more productive, but also reduce human errors in our design.
Q2: Tell me a little about your background.
I worked in Architecture consultant for a couple of years, then I moved to a building contractor. So I’m familiar with the design process and how we use AutoCAD in that area. I saw that many people tried to create custom programs to be more productive. Then I started to work at an Autodesk reseller, so I had more chances to explore AutoCAD features. I started to see that much of the automation can be done in AutoCAD without any programming. One feature that we can use is AutoCAD blocks. For example, we can use dynamic blocks and data extraction.
Q3: You have 3 e-books, one on AutoCAD and two on Revit. Why did you decide to start writing? Are there any other books on AutoCAD in the pipeline?
I started to write on my blog since 2004. My first blog was written in Indonesian. Some of the readers asked if I could provide the contents in e-book format. It was not easy and expensive to have an Internet connection at that time. I thought it was a good idea. So I decided to also have e-books, especially for materials that can’t be covered in blog posts. At the moment I only have one AutoCAD e-book, but I have plan to cover more about AutoCAD best practices.
Wish me luck!
Good luck, Edwin!
- Combine or subtract 2D shapes to create custom shapes - February 17, 2022
- Working with linetype scales - January 18, 2022
- Rename named objects–blocks, dimension styles, layers, and more - December 21, 2021
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Great. Use of a small block command can enhance the productivity dramatically.
I saw no reference to 3D blocks. Does this book cover 3D blocks also??
Maria,
No, the book doesn’t cover 3D blocks. Many of the features, such as dynamic blocks and constraints, don’t apply to 3D. I did want to mention, however (because I forgot in the blog post), that the e-book includes more than a dozen exercises and a zipped file with drawings to use for the exercises.
Best practices? According to whom? Anytime you put an entity into a DWG drawing that is not a true DWG object, but a “Custom Object”, it causes proxy hell for anyone who is not using the same application as the genius who drew it. Thus requiring that the downstream designer buy yet another program they don’t need to be able to work with data that should be an open standard by now. Dynamic blocks, entities from the majority of Autodesk’s vertical products, any third party product using ARX, all cause the loss of control of your own data and put it in the hands of a Corporation who is not looking out for your best interests as evidenced by history.
Do you trust them?
Now that the cloud is looming ever closer to darkening the control of our own intellectual property even further, isn’t it time that users of CAD systems began to demand that any drawing they create be portable, that the standards developed by CAD companies be made public? And isn’t it time for folks that write these blogs be the leaders in applying pressure to the CAD czars to affect that change?
Wow! I only work with AutoCAD, so I’ve never had the experience you talk about. Dynamic blocks are true DWG objects, not custom objects. But I’ve certainly heard of people having problems when they get drawings created in a vertical product and then open it in AutoCAD. What is the “cloud looming ever closer?”
is this book suitable for beginners who want to learn autocad?
or the book is only intended for autocad customization only, especially in the case of block?
Eko,
It covers both beginning and advanced topics, all related to blocks. It starts with the basics–how to create a block.
This would be a lot more useful if there was a link to order the book.
Thanks for the heads up, Kyle. The link has been fixed!