Working with blocks, attributes, and external references

Blocks, attributes, and external references provide mechanisms for managing entities in your drawings and for including additional information with the standard drawing entities. With blocks, you can combine numerous entities into a single entity, and then reuse it, inserting multiple copies. With attributes, you can associate text, such as part numbers or prices, with blocks, and then extract the text-attribute information to a separate file, such as a database, for further analysis. With external references, you can link separate reference drawing files to the current drawing to combine information without adding the contents of the reference drawings to a drawing. If you make changes to the referenced file, all references are updated automatically.

This section explains how to:

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Working with attributes

Working with blocks

Working with external references

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Attach an external reference

Bind an external reference to a drawing

Change the external reference path

Create a block for use within a current drawing

Create a template file

Define an attribute

Detach an external reference

Edit an attribute attached to a block

Edit an attribute definition

Explode a block

Extract attribute information

Insert a block

Insert an entire drawing into the current drawing

Insert an external reference as a block

Overlay an external reference

Redefine a block in the current drawing

Reload an external reference

Save a block as a separate drawing file