Changing the Pen or Line Style of a Block Reference doesn't change the objects in the block
Applies To
All versions of Caddie from Version 10
Question
I change the pen or line style of a Block Reference, but nothing seems to change.
Answer
Firstly the properties that you are changing are those of the Block Reference itself. A Block Reference is an object in its own right. What you see displayed is the content of an indicated block table, which is in a hidden part of the drawing. Think of a Block Reference as a snap-shot of the block information. Therefore to change the property of the contents of a Block Reference you need to change the objects displayed directly.
As Block References are only snap-shots, changing the properties of the contents will affect all Block References with the same name.
So how do we change the pen of objects displayed in Block Reference? This will depend on how the pen for the object is specified and what the result should be. Firstly we need to determine what pen is being used. To do that we need to edit a block. By selecting a current block and with a right click (Context Menu) select EDIT. You can now do an object properties to find the object's properties. Don’t forget to end the block editing when finished (CONTEXT | ABORT | CONTEXT END EDIT BLOCK).
Most surveys specify the pens “By Layer” so as long as it is all the objects in a particular pen that need changing, the quick solution is to modify the layer assignment to the required pen. To do this, select the Layer Set dialogue fron CADDIE | SCOPE | LAY SET and change the layer asignments as required. This way, there is no block editing to be done, however if the lines need to be assigned to a new pen directly, then each block will have to be edited.
To do this we need to edit a block. You can either select a current Block Reference or the preferred method is to insert a new occurrence of the reference, (MENU | FILE | INSERT OTHER | BLOCK REFERENCE selecting the required reference) into the drawing and right click (Context Menu) and select EDIT. Select and change with object properties the objects to be changed. Don’t forget to end the block editing when finished (CONTEXT | ABORT | CONTEXT END EDIT BLOCK). Also if a temporay occurance of the Block reference has been used, don't forget to delete it as it is no longer required.
You may have noticed that not only can we have a direct pen assignment and BY LAYER, but one of the pen assignments can also be BY BLOCK. If that is the case, the objects assigned with this property will automatically take on the properties of the Block Reference, so the only editing that needs to be done is to the Block Reference itself.
The above applies to all object properties, including Line styles and Layers etc.