- [Instructor] We're starting a new chapter now
where we're going to be looking at attributes and tables
in our AutoCAD drawings.
Attributes and tables are another way
of communicating design intent
by way of annotation in your drawings.
We've got a new drawing for you
called Office Workstation.dwg,
and you'll recognize it from previous videos
with the desk, the chair, the computer,
and the little pot plant on the desk.
Now, each of these are individual blocks,
like they have been in previous videos.
And what we're going to do,
we're going to create a workstation block,
but it's going to have some attributes applied to it.
Now, in order to create these attributes,
we need to go to the Insert tab on the ribbon.
And you'll see in the block definition panel,
there's a Define Attributes icon.
Click on that, and that will open up
the Attribute Definition dialogue box.
Now, I'm deliberately moving the dialogue box
over to the right to give a bit of screen real estate.
I don't have much screen res to work with
when I'm a recording these courses,
and I just want to make sure
that you can see everything that's going on.
Now, you'll notice there's lots of information
on the attribute definition, dialogue box.
The most important bit is top right.
You need to give you attribute a tag.
Now, a tag is normally a name for the attribute,
and it must be in capital letters with no spaces.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to put EMP_NO,
employee number.
So the prompt there will be employee number.
So, if you type that in, that will be the question
that pops up in the dialogue box, by the way.
The prompt is the actual text question that you'll see.
So, the default there,
let's say it's nine, nine, nine, nine.
So there's our first attribute like so.
Now, text settings, justification, text dial et cetera.
Just use the standard text style for these.
That is a nice aerial font.
And we're not going to make them annotative,
text heights, we're going to go with about 150 millimeters,
which is obviously metric millimeters.
This particular block is in millimeters,
so just be aware of that.
So, what we'll do is, we'll drop that in at 150 high,
and then make sure that Specify on screen is ticked.
Click on, okay, and you'll see
a little employee number attribute appear.
I'm going to place that just to the a right of the desk,
there like that, so there's our employee number.
What we're going to do now is go back
to the defined attributes button here,
and I'm going to create another attribute,
and this time it'll be employee name.
And we'll just work through this,
creating the tags that we need.
And again, the prompt will be employee name this time,
like so, and the default there might be
someone like Fred Bloggs.
Justification, left, standard text style, text height 150.
It's remembered all those settings.
What we're going to do, we're just going to align it
below the previous attribute definition.
If you tick that box there, and then just click on, Okay,
drops it in nice and neatly underneath the last one.
So what we'll do now,
is we'll go to define attributes again one more time,
and this time the tag will be extension number,
that'll be our phone extension number.
And you'll notice, I'm using underscores instead of space
because you can't use spaces in the tag names.
So, this will be something like telephone extension.
I always put a question mark, because it's a question.
And then the default there, I'll have 12345.
Justification again is left text style standard,
text height is 150.
It's remembered all of that.
Insertion points specify on screen,
you don't need 'cause we'll just align it
below the previous attribute definition again.
You'll notice all of the insertion point and tech settings
gray out when you select that.
Click on, okay, like so,
and you've now got your three little attributes
with your blocks here.
So now, we need to create the block.
So, in this drawing,
we're just going to create a workstation block.
So, I'm going to go up here to create block,
again in the block definition panel,
and there's our Block Definition dialogue box.
So, we'll call this workstation,
and we might put something like _ATTR with attributes
And then, I'm going to pick a point in the drawing,
I'm going to select that corner there,
left click on the endpoint there.
You can see I could never have guessed those X and Y values.
When it comes to select objects,
we'll hit the select objects button,
and you want to make sure that you select everything.
So, I'm going to click here, release the mouse button,
and drag my windows selection over everything,
including the attributes, like so,
and then press Enter to confirm.
And you'll see that all appear in that little preview box
at the top there.
Make sure that your object setting here is set to delete.
We're going to delete all the original objects.
Behavior will not be annotative,
it's not an annotative block, but scale uniformly,
and allow exploding need to be ticked.
Our block unit, as I mentioned earlier, is millimeters.
If you were working in a different type of unit;
inches, feet, meters, you would obviously make sure that
that block unit setting would be set appropriately.
And the description here will be,
workstation block with attributes.
So, we'll just pop that in there.
Always good to put a text description
because then when you're using things
like the tool palettes and design center in AutoCAD,
you'll see that description somewhere
in the properties of the block.
Now, we're not going to open it in the block editor,
so we can untick the Open in Block Editor box,
we don't need to do that.
Now, we're going to click on, okay,
and obviously, everything will disappear.
We did that in previous videos, remember,
when we were creating blocks.
But now, I've got my workstation with attributes block
in this particular drawing.
So, let's jump up to the block panel,
click on the Insert fly out here.
And what we need to do is we need to scroll down
to the bottom, and there's our workstation ATTR.
I did that deliberately because I know that in this drawing
we already had a workstation block,
so I wanted to give it a different name.
So there's workstation ATTR.
If I click now and drag it in,
you can see there's the information with the attributes.
And if I click to place the block in the drawing,
I'll be prompted to edit those attributes
in the edit attributes dialogue box.
So, I could change the telephone extension
to something like 222333
and we'll change the employee name to let's say, Bert Smith,
and his employee number is a different number,
it's 1111 like that.
So, I've just messed around with the telephone extension,
and employee name and employee number.
But notice there's the questions coming up
in the Edit Attribute dialogue box.
So it's always good to have that question
with the little question mark.
Click on, okay, that all updates,
there's our block there with our attributes.
Now, one more thing just before we leave this video,
if you select the block, and then right click,
and go to properties on the shortcut menu,
you will notice in the properties pallet now,
all of our attributes are listed
when we select that particular block.
Extremely useful, because you can go and click on each block
in a floor plan, for example and check the extension number,
employee name, employee number.
I'll close the properties pallet now,
hit Escape to deselect, and there's our block
with attributes in our AutoCAD drawing.