The title is misleading, as I don't know how to word it. I am modifying about 300,000 drawings my company has, changing the titleblocks (and other stuff) from their older designs to a newer one. Now, I've done this before, but the inserted blocks were simpler. The new blocks I've made have nice descriptions, exploding is disallowed, scale is locked to uniform, and the design is much better.
So, previously, I would do this:
Code:
(command -INSERT "TITLEBLOCK=\\SERVER\\BLOCKS\\TITLEBLOCK.dwg" inspoint scalex scaley angle ....)
... to redefine a block called TITLEBLOCK, because the block was in the .dwg file "exploded" (no block, and attribute tags visible), so when they got inserted, they redefined the block.
NOW, I'd like for the blocks to be inserted as my new versions, which doesn't work the same. I currently have drawings called (e.g.) "BLOCK_TITLEBLOCK.dwg" that, in itself, has a block called TITLEBLOCK. But, if I issue this command:
Code:
(command "-insert" "*\\SERVER\\BLOCKS\\BLOCK_TITLEBLOCK.dwg" inspoint scalex angle ....)
... AutoCAD says "duplicate definition, ignoring", and my block stays the same as the inserted block.
I tried renaming the file to TITLEBLOCK.dwg, with a block inside called TITLEBLOCK, and simply redefining the block, but that gives me a "block references itself" issue.
How can I redefine an existing attributed block with a new attributed block (same name, same tags), while maintaining all of the defined block properties. The "*" to explode convention, and the "BLOCKNAME=FILENAME" convention cannot be used together.
I found a goofy workaround of searching whether a block exists, then inserting my block that I've renamed to something else (e.g. I've inserted it as "TITLEBLOCK-GOOD"), then using the BLOCKREPLACE command to replace "TITLEBLOCK" with "TITLEBLOCK-GOOD", deleting my inserted block, and renaming "TITLEBLOCK-GOOD" to "TITLEBLOCK", then move it to the proper location.