- [Instructor] We're staying in
our New Office Project.dwg file,
and we're going to take a little look at
how we can utilize the explode command
when we're working with reused content,
such as AutoCAD blocks.
So I've done a zoom extent
so you can see, obviously, all of the visible drawn objects
in the drawing,
and we've got our workstation blocks
that we created earlier.
So there they all are there, like so.
Now you've got three of them there
and the good thing is,
is that these blocks can be exploded
back to their original objects.
So you'll notice there that what I can do here
is I can actually explode the blocks back to the desk,
the chair, and the plant,
and I can do that just by going up here,
clicking on Explode on the Modify panel,
and now they're all back to their original objects.
So we've got a chair, we've got a plant, we've got a desk.
We've got a desk, a chair, a plant, et cetera.
So you can see they're all individual objects again.
Now, that's a great thing to be able to do,
and one of of things I will say is utilize exploding blocks.
If you need to make a change to your AutoCAD blocks,
just explode it, make the changes.
You can make it into a block again very quickly and easily.
More importantly, though,
let me show you a really neat trick.
I know that I've exploded these
into their original objects again,
but if I just remove them, like this,
and right click and erase,
if I go back now to my Insert tab on the ribbon
and click here, you'll notice my workstation block
is still saved in my drawing.
So click on Workstation
and I can pop the workstation block back in there
very quickly and easily, like so.
And there it is, it's a block again, like so.
Very quick and easy to do.
Obviously, I'd need to bring
these ones in slightly differently.
I'd need to rotate this one and then mirror accordingly.
I'll just leave them
as their original objects for now, like so.
But as you can see,
working with reused content and the explode command,
quick and easy to do,
but you don't lose your blocks when you explode them.
They're still saved in your AutoCAD drawing.
And that's even more reason to make sure
that you get into the habit of saving your drawing
every so often as well.
Make sure that every sort of 15 minutes, 30 minutes,
you save your drawing
because you never know when you explode a block
you might suddenly lose that block
where you're making the changes
because your computer crashes or something.
Just make sure you save your drawing regularly
because it saves all the created blocks
back to the DWG file.