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Navigate the Design Center and create a tool palette from blocks.
Type:
Tutorial
Length:
4 min.
Transcript
00:03
Whether you're ac
00:04
ad manager,
00:05
putting together a template or a designer trying to
00:08
grab specific C ad items from a file.
00:11
The design center allows you to access C
00:14
ad items quickly
00:15
in a project workflow.
00:17
The design center can be used to essentially mine C
00:21
ad items from other files without having to open them.
00:25
This could be useful in a situation where a file
00:28
from outside of your organization has content that you want,
00:32
but you don't want to grab everything
00:34
and risk corrupting your project.
00:37
To get into the design center, you can type in a DC at the command line
00:42
or
00:43
you can go to the view tab
00:45
over to the pallets panel
00:48
and click on the Autocad design Center icon.
00:52
Once in the design center,
00:54
the first thing to do is to browse to the file that has the content that you want in it.
00:58
These files can reside on a local computer
01:02
or on a network
01:03
and you can also search out for a specific URL
01:07
on the internet that contains C ad content.
01:10
One note
01:11
is that you'll need to have an online connection for the last two options.
01:16
Let's go through an example,
01:18
I have a file that I want to use. So I'm going to browse out to our data set.
01:24
And you can see I have
01:26
three different files here. If I click on the first file, which is ad wt file,
01:32
I can see all the categories of items
01:35
that I could bring into my drawing file.
01:38
If I were to right, click on any one of these categories,
01:41
you'll see that we have options to explore search, add to favorites,
01:46
organize favorites
01:47
or create tool pallet
01:49
for blocks.
01:50
You can create a tool pallet that contains all of the blocks in that file.
01:55
With just one click.
01:57
Let's talk about creating a tool pallet. All we have to do is right. Click on blocks,
02:03
go to create tool pallet
02:05
and just like that Autocad starts placing all of the blocks
02:10
onto a custom tool palette for us
02:13
depending on the amount of blocks. This might take a little while.
02:17
So you'll need to be a little bit patient during this process
02:20
when it's done. As you can see,
02:23
a pallet has been created
02:25
and all of the blocks in that file are
02:28
on the pallet for us.
02:31
Now, if we go over to the left side
02:33
and expand the file that we want to look at,
02:37
you can see those categories underneath that file.
02:40
And when you click on the categories, then you can see all of those individual items
02:45
in that file.
02:46
Another function you can do with blocks through the
02:49
design center is you can redefine the block definition.
02:53
The block is modified in its source file
02:56
and all other locations of the block are not automatically updated.
03:01
Then what you can do is select the block,
03:04
right, click and choose insert and redefine.
03:08
If that block is already in your drawing,
03:11
what it will do is reach out to the source file,
03:15
grab the definition of the block from there
03:18
and then reinsert it and redefine it per the changes in the source file.
03:23
Another handy function of the design center.
Video transcript
00:03
Whether you're ac
00:04
ad manager,
00:05
putting together a template or a designer trying to
00:08
grab specific C ad items from a file.
00:11
The design center allows you to access C
00:14
ad items quickly
00:15
in a project workflow.
00:17
The design center can be used to essentially mine C
00:21
ad items from other files without having to open them.
00:25
This could be useful in a situation where a file
00:28
from outside of your organization has content that you want,
00:32
but you don't want to grab everything
00:34
and risk corrupting your project.
00:37
To get into the design center, you can type in a DC at the command line
00:42
or
00:43
you can go to the view tab
00:45
over to the pallets panel
00:48
and click on the Autocad design Center icon.
00:52
Once in the design center,
00:54
the first thing to do is to browse to the file that has the content that you want in it.
00:58
These files can reside on a local computer
01:02
or on a network
01:03
and you can also search out for a specific URL
01:07
on the internet that contains C ad content.
01:10
One note
01:11
is that you'll need to have an online connection for the last two options.
01:16
Let's go through an example,
01:18
I have a file that I want to use. So I'm going to browse out to our data set.
01:24
And you can see I have
01:26
three different files here. If I click on the first file, which is ad wt file,
01:32
I can see all the categories of items
01:35
that I could bring into my drawing file.
01:38
If I were to right, click on any one of these categories,
01:41
you'll see that we have options to explore search, add to favorites,
01:46
organize favorites
01:47
or create tool pallet
01:49
for blocks.
01:50
You can create a tool pallet that contains all of the blocks in that file.
01:55
With just one click.
01:57
Let's talk about creating a tool pallet. All we have to do is right. Click on blocks,
02:03
go to create tool pallet
02:05
and just like that Autocad starts placing all of the blocks
02:10
onto a custom tool palette for us
02:13
depending on the amount of blocks. This might take a little while.
02:17
So you'll need to be a little bit patient during this process
02:20
when it's done. As you can see,
02:23
a pallet has been created
02:25
and all of the blocks in that file are
02:28
on the pallet for us.
02:31
Now, if we go over to the left side
02:33
and expand the file that we want to look at,
02:37
you can see those categories underneath that file.
02:40
And when you click on the categories, then you can see all of those individual items
02:45
in that file.
02:46
Another function you can do with blocks through the
02:49
design center is you can redefine the block definition.
02:53
The block is modified in its source file
02:56
and all other locations of the block are not automatically updated.
03:01
Then what you can do is select the block,
03:04
right, click and choose insert and redefine.
03:08
If that block is already in your drawing,
03:11
what it will do is reach out to the source file,
03:15
grab the definition of the block from there
03:18
and then reinsert it and redefine it per the changes in the source file.
03:23
Another handy function of the design center.
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