Dynamic Block - Office Location Information

[CCarleton]

Hi All,

I have been working on some standards in our titleblock and one of the things I am trying to accomplish is incorporating standard blocks within each titleblock we have so that if I need to change something across all titleblocks it pushes it across all of them as opposed to needing to manage each one. For instance when I first got my hands on this our logo was just lines, hatching, and text within the titleblock. So I blocked it out, and added it to each titleblock which helped recently when our logo was updated and all I had to do was edit the block that is referenced in each titleblock.

Recently I went through to update our office location information. This office information is just attributes directly within all of our titleblocks that is being utilized by a block properties table to display the appropriate information. As we have 4 titleblocks going to each one to update these attributes is just annoying. What I was hoping to do was create a block of the attributes to throw in the titleblock and then still use the block properties table on that block of attributes, but it doesn't appear to respect the attributes within the block, which honestly didn't surprise me.

I am looking for an suggestions or thoughts on how it might be possible to create a block that I could insert into all of our titleblocks that would be able to be interacted with in such manner. In the past if I haven't been able to figure out how to get a block within the titleblock to work properly my solution has been to place it outside of the titleblock, but I am trying to avoid that if at all possible.

Thanks

[remi678731]

So why don't you just change the tag to say what the common use would be then should so that way then still be able to change easily when needed

- - - Updated - - -

Of course you could ask the LUSP writers here to help you with a routine that would work

[CCarleton]

Not sure I'm following what your suggestion is.

[BlackBox]

If you leave the office info as Attributes within your titleblock, you'll have less to maintain across multiple offices.

You can use something like Lee's Update Titleblock Attributes app, which populates as much or as little of your titleblock info as you want via CSV file:

http://www.lee-mac.com/updatetitleblock.html

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Separately, if like me, you prefer to manage CSV files using Excel, but find the task of manually exporting to CSV to be a PITA:

If you need to quickly convert XLS/XLSx --> CSV, this Right Click Excel to CSV Windows Shell Context Menu might help.

2016-07-14_16-40-12.png

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Cheers

[cadtag]

The approach I take here is to Xref in the title block. Anything that is project specific is part of the Xref (which includes a couple of dynamic blocks for status and office location)/ Sheet specific stuff is inserted into the sheets as a block containing nothing but attribute definitions - most of those point back to the Sheet Set to manage the data in one place, using regular Sheet properties and custom properties.

[CCarleton]

Hi everyone,

I might not have explained myself very well, or maybe I'm just not understanding the suggestions.

To reiterate/expand here is what our workflow currently looks like:

We have two templates, our drawing based template and our layout template. The drawing template houses our C3D styles, layers, blocks, etc and is what we use to start every drawing while the layout template is bare minimum with our layouts. We use the "From Template..." command to bring in the appropriate layout we need for the drawing. I've heard of the xref strategy, but never employed it. For the record we are in the survey department, and our deliverables tend to be 1-3 pages long within the same drawing so I don't think the xref strategy is crucial to us as our drawings are typically 1-3 pages long, and it's pretty rare for us to use multiple drawings on any project (basically whenever we get a corridor easement/acquisition request). Typically I just abuse GATTE push attribute changes across all layouts.

As I mentioned previously we have have 4 different titleblocks being used in our layout template based on exhibit needs within our department. Each of these titleblocks has the same attributes made for office information made within them, and they all use a block properties table so that after importing the layout they need our drafters can select which office the document is coming out of. Because they are 4 separate titleblock if office location information changes I have 4 titleblocks I have to go into and update the block properties table.

My goal was to hopefully to find a way to create a block that I could drop in each titleblock so that in the future when I need to update office information I edit that single block, and it pushes it to all four titleblocks while maintaining that dynamic component to being able to select which office the drafter is coming out of. I'll check out Lee's routine as he has helped out before, but at a cursory glance I'm not sure if it's geared towards what I am looking for?

Thanks all

[Opie]

Are the attributes for the office location necessary? Would a dynamic block with each location in text (non-attribute) form be simpler to use?

The suggestions to use XREFs for title blocks allows one to use a common drawing for the title block elements. If you need elements of the title block to change, such as sheet number and title, you could insert a block with attributes for the text elements of the title block that are separate from the XREF.

How you move forward is up to you and your firm. My firm does the XREF title block for some projects and INSERTs the title block for other projects. It depends on the drawing.

[tedg]

We too use the xref title block method as others have mentioned.
The sheet information is a block per sheet (with fields for Sheet Set Manager)
The title block drawing lives in the Xref folder (per project, but also lives in our template xref location with relative path to be copied to the project)
I've heard of companies keeping their title blocks in ONE place and xreffing them per project with the project and sheet info separated as needed in the drawing files.

In my opinion, your best bet to do what you want to do is;

A) have the title blocks as separate files xreffed in to your layouts.
Then you're only controlling (4) files for everyone to use.

B) To take that even further, you can have the "changing Logo" or whatever as a separate file xreffed (attach vs overlay) to the title blocks mentioned in option A), then you simply update that drawing and the other (4) files get updated.

Or a simpler version of all of that is..

C) To just have the "changing Logo" or whatever, as a separate file xreffed into your title bocks/layouts that are in your template.
(you still have the title blocks as blocks in your layouts as you do now, but the logo "spot" has the xreffed logo that can be changed outside of them, and updates all of them at once)

[CCarleton]

Are the attributes for the office location necessary? Would a dynamic block with each location in text (non-attribute) form be simpler to use?

The suggestions to use XREFs for title blocks allows one to use a common drawing for the title block elements. If you need elements of the title block to change, such as sheet number and title, you could insert a block with attributes for the text elements of the title block that are separate from the XREF.

How you move forward is up to you and your firm. My firm does the XREF title block for some projects and INSERTs the title block for other projects. It depends on the drawing.

I mean I'm open to ideas on this, and maybe what I want isn't possible and I have to live with it, I am just trying to find things that could be streamlined a bit better.

The attributes happened to work out well for the block properties table since it creates a drop down menu for drafters to pick from once they insert the titleblock into their drawing, but now that I am revisiting them due to a few office location changes it gave me thought to finding a solution to having to bedit each titleblock. When I first did office locations I believe I just did stacked each piece of text on top of each other with them layered per office, but people didn't like having to use the layer manager to manage titleblock information. The other option is to remove the office information from the titleblock and have it standing in free space, but I am trying to avoid things like this as our titleblocks are set up to change their paper size based on needs which means if someone brings in the layout, and changes it from 11x17 to 22x34 the office information wouldn't move.

Ted,

I'll look into the xref side of things, I'm not really sure it solves the issue I'm trying to solve, but maybe I don't know any better. I'm pretty happy with how everything in the titleblock works right now, I just wanted to see if there was a way to block out office informaton and still keep it working in a dynamic block.

[cadtag]

for an old skool approach, before XRef was a thing, we would INSERT a base file as a block, and do the design linework on top of that. I also has a LISP command that would re-define the base block, reading the new definition in from the server. Seems that this type of approach might work for you. Have your dynamic block inserted, and if anything changes (address, phone, etc), automate the redefinition of the block. I think the user would probably have to use the dynamic properties to get the correct office address, but it ought to work.