I often start work in the Front view. I often encounter problems with blocks I define in the Front view displaying in the WorldTop plane when I insert them in the Front view. Why?
I’ve made a simple example.
WhyABlock.3dm (47.2 KB) In this example there is a green object that I made into a block. Then I inserted the block in the Front view at zero. It is laying on its back. You can see it in the perspective and top view. Why? I have to go and rotate it to get it to display properly in the Front view. As far as I can tell, there is no way to define what plane the block should display on. Why does it default to WorldTop?
_block (defining a block definition) is working in world coordinates.
_insert (inserting a block as instance) depends on current cplane.
… i agree that it would be nice to have a “use current cplane” when a _block is defined.
but we miss this … so there only is to do it yourself with the following workflow:
if you need to define a block somewhere in space - and you can not construct it in world-top the best approach is to define a cplane.
then instead of directly defining the block,
select the geometry, _remapCplane (from custom cplane to world)
define the _block
Insert the block on your custom _cplane
imagine we have a freely orientated cplane - the east and west roof of your building.
we want to construct a Tile that is excatly 1/8 and 1/4 of the roof:
set up a _cplane for roof east and roof west (see _namedCplane)
construct the initial Tile Geometry on the Roof East
transform the geometry (no copy):
_remapCplane (from cplane roof east to cplane top)
_block (insert point is w0 (World origin)
_insert the block on the roof using roof east cplane
_array the block
_remapCplane the block to the roof west (this is wy i have the “Ab” Logo on the Tile)
check the Layer setting - this is how i teach to set them up.
Thanks. I appreciate the example. But seems like if McNeel wanted to improve blocks, here would be a good place to start. Just let us have some editing features of blocks beyond the basics.
