I have a question regarding title blocks in Rhino. I’ve searched for an answer for some time now, but I haven’t been able to find a satisfying answer. Which is why I’m hoping to find some here!
Autocad has the ability to edit attribute definitions inside blocks using the enhanced attribute editor. This works great when you have a multisheet file where you want certain text fields to have the same value and others to have various user defined values.
The only option I see in Rhino to get similar results is to explode the block, which is undesirable.
Does anyone know if there is a way this can be accomplished? Plugins, scripts, workarounds, all suggestions are welcome.
What we do is have a template file with a sheet already set up. On that sheet is our “Title Block” block. All the attributes that would be consistent from page-to-page are inside the block; the only two that we consistently change are the page number (which is embedded in the block as the automatic “pagename” text field), and the page title, which is edited outside of the block by the user.
Everything else is all embedded in the block - Status (IFA, IFP), Drawn by, Checked by, Dates, Client, Project, Item - you only need to change those once when you start, then you’re good!
Thank you for your reply, we actually use this approach too at the moment. (except we explode the block and make the block again leaving out the ‘user defined text fields’)
Am I correct in assuming that it is simply not possible to have attributes inside blocks?
I have had this same question for quite some time now.
Apparently, the answer lies somewhere in the Rhino “text fields”.
I must say that I have not had time to properly research how to work with them, but I guess it is not as easy as AutoCan attributes… Either that or I´m dumb as a rock.
I don’t use blocks and in the case of the title block (yes, it’s called “block” but …) I don’t really see the point of making it into a block. Do you very often change the layout or logos? Do you notice performance problems when it’s not blocked?
At any rate, …
Could you be more specific as to which attributes you are unable to put in a block? Do you - for example - want the TITLE entry to be one thing on page 1 and something else on page 2? In that case, no, you cannot have that in a block. Blocks are strictly for identical things only (though the “PageNumber” text field will automatically update…).
This feature is not currently available in Rhino. In V6, we are improving our text field support in blocks as well as providing some improvements in the user interface for working with user text. This combination should get you what you are trying to achieve (I’m not at my computer at the moment so I can’t check to see if everything is working correctly for this in the current V6 beta release.)
As @stevebaer noted, the text field support in blocks has been improved for V6. I will look into this to see if this improvement is what we have been looking for.
In autocan there are easily editable “text fields” to be attached to the blocks. They are called attributes. They can be used for title blocks or for example for labelling construction elements.
You create the block for a door and add a label for the door type number, the format and position of this label will remain coherent thorugh all the instances. Furthermore, the position of the label can be changed without breaking the block.
7 years after, it still is not possible. Layout would be much more useful with this feature. I’ve been trying to figure it out, thinking such simple feature would be already there. But I stumbled upon this 7-year-old posting.