Learn how to create a block from geometry and adjust its measurements to fit specific needs in architectural drawings. The process involves using the right block command, selecting objects, setting a base point, and mirroring or stretching the block as needed.
Key Insights
- The creation of a block from geometry involves using the right block command, selecting objects, setting a base point and naming the block. This makes it easy to alter the block's measurements in architectural drawings.
- Blocks can be adjusted to fit specific needs by mirroring or stretching them. This is done by using the grip edit to mirror the door and moving it to the right location.
- Blocks are useful for creating objects that may not appear on the floor plan like the attic vent. These can be included by referencing the elevation handouts to locate and draw the vents.
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Let's create a block from this geometry. We know that we're going to use the Right Block command, so I will go WB for Right Block and hit ENTER.
In this case, we want to go back to converting to a block. We want this to stay where it is, and I'll select my objects, and here again I'll use a selection window, left to right, and I am grabbing 10 objects. I'll hit ENTER.
The base point here is going to be along my ground line, and in my case, I'm going to pick it at the hinge side, the hinge side. That's this side. I'll pick right here.
Excellent. Let's browse so that we can change the name of our block. This will be door dash 3 feet 0,30, and 6 feet 8,30,68.
Excellent. Let's hit Save and OK. Now we've added that door to our current Blocks panel.
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Excellent. Let's switch our view. I'll switch from front to back, and we can see that we need one more door in this location.
This is the back door, and if I place my door 30,68, I'm going to turn off repeat placement. I'll place this door at this point here, but we can already see that there are some big issues. First, this door is facing the wrong direction.
The hinge is on the other side. The hinge needs to be on this side. Second, the door is too wide.
This door location is only 2 feet 8, not 3 feet 0, but we can still utilize the geometry we were provided by creating the 3 feet wide door for this location. I'm going to first mirror this door by using my Grip Edit. I'll click the grip to make it hot, right click, mirror.
I'm going to turn on Ortho and click. Notice because I used the Grip Edit, there was not a question of do we want to keep the existing geometry. There is no existing geometry.
It's an internal operation for the block. Okay, now that we've mirrored the door, we can move it into the right location so that the hinge is correctly aligned, but we can still see on this side that the door is too wide. In order to make this more obvious, I'm going to change this line color to white, but you do not need to do that.
That's just so we can differentiate between our blue geometry and our white geometry. Okay, I can see that this door is too wide, and I know that it's 4 inches, but in this case, we don't need to know that. We just need to Stretch.
To begin, we need to Explode this door, so I'll go Explode. The door is now exploded into its individual geometry, and now we can go Stretch. I'll stretch all the way to the middle of the door and to lock it in.
Now, let's zoom down here and grab where the door is here, and we're going to stretch to there, but watch what happens. When I start to stretch, you'll see that we also grabbed the door opening geometry. It will start to stretch with us, and as we move, I can never catch up to that geometry, but notice when I move out of the way, there is a gray ghost of our original geometry.
When performing a Stretch command, you can snap to any geometry that was not included, and you can also snap to the original geometry location, so I can come back and find this line right here and snap to the endpoint. It will stretch our white line, which might be blue on your screen, to be a slanted line, but that doesn't matter because I'm now going to select both of these geometries and hit the Delete key. Now this door is in the correct location, and we flipped it so that the hinge is on the other side, and now we can create our block.
This will be a door 2'8 × 6'8, so we'll name it door 2868. Let's go ahead and do that. WB for Right Block.
I'm going to select my objects, selection window, enter to lock it in. I'll pick my base point. Again, I'm going to choose the hinge location at the finished floor line.
That's right here. Let's browse and name this door-2868. Save and OK, and now we can see that this has also been converted to a block, and it's in our current Blocks panel.
Escape, Escape, Escape. Let's go View, Left, Zoom Extents, and Control+S to save. Now there's one bit of geometry that's left that was not on our floor plan at all, and we can see it on our elevation PDF handout files.
That is the attic vent. The attic vent is clearly not drawn on the floor plan because it's well above our floor plan cut. It might appear in a reflected ceiling plan, but more often than not, obscure small openings like this might not appear on the floor plan.
So in this case, we need to use our elevation handouts to locate and draw the attic vents. We'll do that in the next video. See you there.
