# Create Unique Block - a possibility? or a wish?

**URL:** <https://discourse.mcneel.com/t/create-unique-block-a-possibility-or-a-wish/10929>\
**Category:** Rhino for Windows\
**Created:** [August 14, 2014, 2:02pm UTC](https://discourse.mcneel.com/t/create-unique-block-a-possibility-or-a-wish/10929 "2014-08-14T14:02:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![tyler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/35a633/32.png) [@tyler](https://discourse.mcneel.com/u/tyler)\
**Post date:** [August 14, 2014, 2:02pm UTC](https://discourse.mcneel.com/t/create-unique-block-a-possibility-or-a-wish/10929/1 "2014-08-14T14:02:32Z")

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Often I have a repeated piece of geometry, say a piece of a building facade, and I need to duplicate it with the same base point as a unique block.

The problem I run into is that I can explode the block and then create a new block, but I don’t remember where to place the base point. This is a problem because I need to be able to swap out the blocks with the “replaceblock” command.

I tried inserting the block I wanted to create a unique version of and utilized the same insert point when creating the second version of the block, but something was very wrong when I tried “replace block”. Maybe something to do with the CPlane, but I don’t remember what CPlane I was in when I created the first block. So, is there a better way?

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**Author:** ![pascal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/mcneel/user_avatar/discourse.mcneel.com/pascal/32/479395_2.png) [@pascal](https://discourse.mcneel.com/u/pascal)\
**Post date:** [August 14, 2014, 3:16pm UTC](https://discourse.mcneel.com/t/create-unique-block-a-possibility-or-a-wish/10929/2 "2014-08-14T15:16:33Z")

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Hi Tyler - ExtractPt on a block instance will place a point at the insertion point.

-Pascal

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**Author:** ![tyler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/35a633/32.png) [@tyler](https://discourse.mcneel.com/u/tyler)\
**Post date:** [August 14, 2014, 3:29pm UTC](https://discourse.mcneel.com/t/create-unique-block-a-possibility-or-a-wish/10929/3 "2014-08-14T15:29:01Z")

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Thanks, this works, but because I have been changing the CPlane I can’t get them to be the same so I can swap them out.

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**Author:** ![tyler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/35a633/32.png) [@tyler](https://discourse.mcneel.com/u/tyler)\
**Post date:** [August 14, 2014, 3:34pm UTC](https://discourse.mcneel.com/t/create-unique-block-a-possibility-or-a-wish/10929/4 "2014-08-14T15:34:04Z")

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wait, it worked when I changed the CPlane to world “top” before inserting the block from the list, extracting the point, exploding it, and redefining it.

This seems to work, but im not sure if I created the original block in the world “top” view and if I had created it in another Cplane this would have worked.
