- [Instructor] We're staying
in our new office project .dwg file.
And we're going to take a look at the W block command
now, the write block command, W-R-I-T-E,
as if you're writing with a pen.
Now, the W block command allows you to send a block
from your existing drawing to its own separate at DWG file.
So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to show you
how to write one of the blocks, your workstation block
from your project drawing into its own separate DWG file,
and then bring that particular DWG back into your existing
drawing so that you can redefine blocks.
Now, all I ask you to think about here is think about
your workstation block here, this one here.
Imagine if there was like 800 of these in a building
and somebody said to you, we don't want the plant
and we don't want the chair shown in the workstation block.
You would have to go around and edit each individual block.
You don't have to do that
with this write block or W block command.
Hit Escape to deselect the little workstation block there,
and go to the insert tab on the ribbon.
And where you've got your fly-out here,
you've got create block, your regular create block,
but we've also got write block.
So we click on write block.
There's our write block dialogue box.
Now the good thing is I can go
and source a block from the drawing.
So if I click here like so and select workstation like so,
base point, objects, et cetera are all grayed out
because it's using the objects
in the block, the workstation block.
So our chair, our desk, and our plant.
It picks up a file name and a path,
you can choose your path
by clicking on this little ellipsis button there,
and I've already got one in there,
there's workstation there.
I'm going to select that and click on save,
because that is one that I've already created earlier,
but you would save your workstation .dwg
to a known location using that file name and path.
What I've also done is made sure that the workstation,
write block, the DWG file is saved
in the library as well in case you need it.
The insert units will be millimeters,
we're working in millimeters in this particular drawing
in our new office project drawing.
So I click on okay.
And it'll replace that,
I click on replace because I've already got one there.
Sorry about the long file path there,
that's just my file structure
when I'm recording videos for you.
So what we've got now is a separate drawing
of our workstation.
So if I go up to open now and look for this
in the folder where I saved it, using the W block command,
there's the workstation drawing there.
So I can open that up now as a separate
AutoCAD drawing file.
So if I now just double-click on the wheel to zoom extent,
there's all the objects there.
We've got our desk, our chair, and our plant.
Now remember what I said,
they just want the workstation as the desk like that now.
So I'm going to remove the chair
and remove the plant and just right-click and erase.
And that's all we've got there now
in our workstation .dwg file.
So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to go
up to save like so,
so that will save the workstation .dwg file
as its own separate drawing.
I can now close that by clicking
on the little red cross there in the file tab.
So now, I've got a workstation block here,
here called workstation.
What happens if I insert that workstation .dwg file
without the chair and without the plant?
Well, I would normally consider using insert here.
But you'll notice
that we haven't got the workstation DWG in that list.
We've got our original workstation block with the plant
and the chair, but I haven't got the workstation DWG file.
So what I can do is I can use the old classic
AutoCAD insert block command.
Just hit Escape to lose the menu there on the screen,
bring the cross here into the drawing area
and type insert block, all one word and press Enter.
And you'll notice this is the old way of inserting blocks
before we had the blocks palette in AutoCAD.
So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to browse now to find
that workstation DWG file, there it is there,
without the plant and without the chair.
Click on open.
I'm going to use specify on screen.
With the little tick box scale,
I'm going to leave as it is,
one rotation I'm going to leave at zero.
Notice the block unit is millimeters
and I can click on okay.
And it'll ask me, do I want to redefine the block?
So I say yes to that.
And in it comes, you'll notice.
There is the block there.
So I bring that in and I can redefine that block like so.
Now I'm just going to place that sort of down there
for the moment.
And as you can see my workstation block there
on the workstation's layer is now redefined.
These won't be redefined
'cause remember we exploded them.
So they're all back to their original objects
but this particular workstation has now been redefined
by the separate workstation DWG file,
which has the same name
as your workstation block in your AutoCAD drawing.
Now I can delete this particular block,
this doesn't have to stay anymore,
that can just be removed,
so I'll hit the Delete key on the keyboard.
But if I now go up to insert block here and slide down,
you'll see that my workstation block,
the definition is updated from the DWG file.
There's no plant and there's no chair.
So if I click on workstation there,
can you see that my block is coming in without the chair
and without the plant?
I'll just hit Escape to cancel that insert block command.
But it's clever, isn't it?
If I've got loads of workstations to update,
what I do is I do a write block, a W block,
send it out to a separate DWG,
update that block with the same name
as the block in my drawing, save it, and then insert it
as a block using the insert block command,
and I can update all the blocks
that have that block definition in the drawing,
a great productivity tool, utilize W block,
it's a great command.