Yep… added y’all’s comments here -
RH-60892 Editing nested blocks should be easier in BlockEdit
-Pascal
3 Likes
heh.
Editing nested blocks is still strange and not intuitive. I wish to:
- click the nested block and see my selection within Block Edit window (highlight the name or sth…)
- click the name in Block Edit window and see the selection in 3D without editing it instantly. What usually happens is that I edit nested block and click “OK” which actually closes the whole block edit, but I somehow expect to close only nested block editing and returning one “level up”
- have better appearance of nested block being edited; at this moment I am getting really strange overlay of the original block grayed out (locked?) so it’s difficult to work on my modifications:
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+1 for this topic, 6 years later! I import a lot of geometry from Revit, and it all comes in as a long list of blocks inside of blocks. If I double click on the nested block, why am I not able to directly edit that block?
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6 years…wow. +1 to double click for sub blocks.
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Oh. Hello.
Look at that. Another thread on this. How surprising.
But don’t worry. Unlike other companies, McNeel listens!
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March 2022, +1
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another +1
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we have been promised complete over haul in regards to blocks. we will see 
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After 7+ years… +1!
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I still get updates every time someone drops a “+1”. My rhino legacy.
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Am I right in saying that none of this has been resolved? I have been trying to remove layers for objects imported with blocks some of which are nested 3-4 levels into the block and its a nightmare to find the objects. Autocad has the “move to layer command” which makes the process so simple. Anyone have any ideas how I can achieve the same without having to comb through each individual block?
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It might depend on how much you need the original blocks and how many you’ve got.
You can always explode them all, all nested levels, with ExplodeBlock.
Change the layers you need to, and the re do the block you need. Problem is you will need to re insert tge block everywhere it has been placed. Probably this can be automated with Grasshopper.
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That’s what i have had to do. But it is hardly efficient and it increases the size of the file considerably. I inadvertently exploded all the text and hatch also as it’s difficult to keep track of how many levels deep you need to explode to get all the nested blocks and change every object in the block to layer 0
exploding should not an option/solution. that goes againts the very meaning of blocks themselves.
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Check this out:
One of the tools the script offers is to assign all block objects to a selected layer, including all nested blocks. You can also control which types of objects within blocks are affected. It’s a relatively old script but I think all still should work OK.
–jarek
If you make a copy of the entire file, do the ugly work with ExplodeBlock or SuperExplodeBlock to find out where the changes need to be made, then go back to the original file and edit the offending block(s) in place, that reduces the disruption.
Even that is an ugly solution to the problem though.
It seems as though there is no elegant solution 
Exploding blocks is a big no no for me. Nothing good seems to come of it.
I feel that Rhinos block manager needs an overhaul. The user interface is very counter intuitive which is very un-Rhino
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That’s why I suggest making a copy of the main file (including all blocks) to find out where objects/layers/line types etc reside. You can just delete the copied file once you’ve found out what needs to be done. That way, you leave all of the block structures in the original file intact.
The root of the problem is that blocks (i.e. the block definition) shouldn’t really reside on a layer. But there isn’t a way around that
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The gray overlay is the worst…
1 Like