Back in 2009 when I first started writing the CAD Setter Out, one of the blogs that inspired me to begin was ‘CAD-Notes.com’ by the Mighty Edwin Prakoso.
Little did I know that Edwin himself had only started CAD-Notes a few months before!
I have long since admired Edwins clean, concise and logically structured articles. His Blog has been influential on both the design and the writing style of CadSetterOut.com. It’s also great to have a little competition ;)
Since then, Edwin and I have been in touch and I am also proud to have contributed a few articles to CAD-Notes myself.
It’s about time then that I make sure that you all know one of Edwin’s most successful side projects, his E-book ‘AutoCAD Block best practices’.
As I hope that you all know, AutoCAD’s Blocks are a great way of improving your productivity by re-using content when creating your drawings. Blocks can be used for drawing symbols (such as a northing arrow or a scale bar) or to represent real world objects (such as a desk or a computer).
Blocks are commonly used for your drawing’s Title block, and they can also be used for organising your companies typical detail library.
But AutoCAD Blocks can be more than a simple ‘cut & paste’ tool. Blocks can contain Fields, which read data from the drawing in real time. With the addition of Block Attributes, AutoCAD Blocks can be used to create a database of information for you to use in conjunction with your drawings.
With the addition of Parametric Geometrical constraints, AutoCAD Blocks can become a mini content generator, with many different block configurations held inside one block definition.
In ‘AutoCAD block best practices’, Edwin takes the concept of creating and managing AutoCAD Blocks and, in his usual clear style, walks you through the steps to create simple, useful reusable content.
Edwin then takes it up a gear, running through Block Attributes, Dynamic Blocks and Blocks with parametric constraints to really boost your productivity. Edwin shows you how to use Blocks to reduce the complexity of your drawings and save your save time by building your own ‘Smart Library’ of CAD blocks to distribute through your company.
Edwin’s PDF E-book download comes complete with a zipped file of AutoCAD DWG drawings, which contain the blocks you need to complete the exercises.
I can recommend ‘AutoCAD Block best practices’ to anyone who is new to the concept of AutoCAD Blocks, or to more experienced users who are looking for that extra productivity edge. ‘AutoCAD Block best practices’ is priced at US$ 14,95 (That’s under a Tenner in UK money at the time of writing).
You can find out more about ‘AutoCAD Block best practices’ and purchase your own copy here
NB: This is an affiliate link. If you decide to purchase ‘AutoCAD Block best practices’ after clicking this link, I will get a small commission. However, you won’t get charged any extra. If you are just curious – you can click here to go straight to CAD-notes.com.