Turning block or block visibility, how to turn on or off?

#1
I would like to turn on or off the visibility of groups and/or blocks composed of boxes, polylines,etc placed on different layers.

When I group these items into a "group" I find I can select the group and edit the visibility on the properties dialog to turn it off. Once I do this, I cannot select the group so I can turn the visibility property back on. Is there an alternate way to select the group once it is not visible on the screen?

2nd question,

Is there a way to change visibility of a block composed of parts on different layers?

Thanks,
Kevin

Re: Turning block or block visibility, how to turn on or off?

#4
Hi Quan & Steve,

Thanks for your kind responses.

I tried the HideObjects and Unhide (UnisolatedObjects) commands and that did the trick for me. It worked for blocks created from drawing files and blocks defined using XREF manager.

I also tried the XREF method suggested by Steve... insert the new block on layer FRED. That worked fine when the source drawing had a single layer. However, my source drawing has multiple layers and turning off "Fred" only turns off layer 0 in the source dwg, not the additional layers that are created when importing via XREF. Perhaps there is a way to accomplish this, not sure.

In any case, I can go forward in my work with the HideObject approach.

I have another question relating to rendering with intellicad and Artisan and differences I see when using XREF's. I'll make a new posting for that.

Thanks again,
Kevin

Re: Turning block or block visibility, how to turn on or off?

#6
Thank you Steve. I have been using the freeze lay method as you suggest. And maybe getting a little better about organizing my top level drawing layers when adding block defined as lower level drawings. I create a drawing layer specifically assigned to the complex block I am adding. For instance, loghouse_block holds the inserted loghouse.dwg block. This makes it easy to turn the whole think on and off (using freeze) rather than doing each of the many (imported) layers, a methodology suggested here that I am now applying.

Thanks again for all the help!

BTW, model is our farmhouse that was damaged during summer storm. We are planning repair of porch which was torn off.
Image
Kevin

Re: Turning block or block visibility, how to turn on or off?

#7
Hi Kevin,

I have been using that method for a number of years, and like you I have a specific layer for each Xref block.
I had to find a way of managing what was on screen to ease the load on my PC. when I started working on these:
Image
(sorry about the image size :) )

All of the pipework is made up of individual pipes, all coming together in one single piping layout.
Then there is the main steel jacket.
Individual deck layouts, with individual vessels etc etc

By using 'freeze' rather than 'off' removes components from the 'regen' number crunching for the PC.

Anyway, glad to help.
SteveN.
PS.
It's an offshore Gas Compression Platform here in the UK, with twin compressors & coolers.
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