Inside AutoCAD® 2002

Understanding Blocks

A block is a collection of individual objects combined into a larger single object. Think of the block as the parent of a family, and think of the individual objects as the parent’s children. Although the children have identities of their own (color, layer, lineweight, and linetype), they are also under the control of their parent, which has its own color, layer, lineweight, and linetype properties.

The fact that both the block (parent) and its individual objects (children) have their own properties makes it important to understand how these properties are affected by certain conditions. For example, assume that a block has been created from several child objects and that each child object was originally created on its own ...