Free Tutorials: Free Autocad Tutorials on Creation and Usage of Attribute

Free Tutorials: Free Autocad Tutorials on Creation and Usage of Attribute
Page content

You can generally create a table or title box in autocad by many ways, most commonly used methods are:

  • You can copy a similar table from other drawing and paste it to your current drawing. After that you edit the values of some required fields.
  • You create a block of the table and paste wherever is required and after that explode it and do the required editing.

But for both the cases, you have to do a very tedious job called editing the existing values. Editing increases the chance of human error in drawing.

We have a better way to deal with the tables and title box kinds of stuffs, that is, if you can create a block or wblock with some of the required fields will get values from user input (from autocad prompt). Here, you have to use autocad attributes.

What is an AutoCAD attribute?

Attribute creates a tag to attach text to a block. And while the block will be placed somewhere, autocad will ask for the value of the attributes associated with the AutoCAD block.

Attributes data could be extracted and could be use for creation of BOM.

Defining an attribute

For defining an attribute, you need to type a command attdef at the command line of autocad. The attribute definition box will open. The attribute definition dialogue box is having following four sections:

  1. Mode: here you may or may not check one or more options. These options will define the types of attribute you are creating.

Invisible option will make the attribute invisible but the attribute value will be attached with the drawing and could be extracted.

If you check the constant or preset mode then the value of the attributes could not be changed.

If you go with verify mode, then autocad will ask twice for user input, so that user can verify the value.

  1. Attribute: in this section you need to set the tag name, prompt and its default value.
  2. Insertion point: Here you need to specify the insertion point of the attribute. Either you can pick point from screen or can enter the X, Y and Z coordinate values of the point.
  3. Text option: Here you will have all the text size, rotation and placement related options.

After the attribute definition is over, you need to define a block which includes the attribute as an object. To know more about how to define a block/wblock click here.

Now whenever you will insert the block/wblock (which contains the attribute) autocad will ask for the inputs (for attributes values).

Example

Now if you want to create a title box which contains (say) only one field as drawing name. You draw a rectangle first, then define an attribute, with tag name drawing_name and prompt “enter drawing name?” place the attribute at the middle of the rectangle, make a block of the rectangle and the attribute.

Your title box is ready!! You can place it to other drawing also if you use Wblock instead of block.