Toggling the display of grips within blocks

By default, when you select a block, AutoCAD displays only one grip, at the block’s base point. However, what if you want to grip edit the block from some other point in the block. You can do so by displaying the grips of all the objects in the block. Jack Foster sent in a great AutoLISP routine that easily toggles between these modes. To use it, type the following at the end of your acad.lsp file (or create the file if it doesn’t exist and put it in your AutoCAD’s  \Support folder).

(defun c:gb()
(setvar “gripblock” (abs(1- (getvar “gripblock”))))
)

This will load automatically when you start AutoCAD. Then simply type gb to run the routine. Each time you use gb, the routine toggles the GRIPBLOCK system variable setting. Here you see the results of both settings.

Jack notes that you can use the same method to toggle other system variables that use 0 and 1 as their two values, such as tilemode.

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Ellen Finkelstein

Ellen Finkelstein is the author of the best-selling AutoCAD & AutoCAD LT Bible, which started with R14. Ellen has written extensively on AutoCAD, including articles for Autodesk’s website and features for AutoCAD’s Help system. Ellen’s first book was AutoCAD For Dummies Quick Reference.

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