“WBLOCK” Command in AutoCAD 2012

By Martin Phelps

In this week’s blog’s I’ve moved away from command short cuts and sub commands, instead I’m looking at a particular command since it now can be accessed by an icon.

In previous versions of AutoCAD to gain access to the “WBLOCK” command you simply pressed the “W” followed by enter, but in AutoCAD 2012 it has now been promoted and has its own icon, but it may not in the most memorable place, so where is the icon? Well it’s located under the “Create Block” drop down list in the “Block Definition” Panel of the “Insert” Tab of the ribbon menu, not a very memorable place, probably easier to just type in “W”

One function of the “WBLOCK” command is that it can used to create a new file from currently open drawing; this will write the entire drawing with the exception of unreferenced symbols to a file, resulting in some cases the file becoming smaller, this can also be a way of correcting some errors within drawing file.

Using “WBLOCK”, command the source data type can be selected from one of the following options Block, Entire Drawing, and Objects and sent to an external file with a chosen name and location.

Typing in a minus sign prior to the “W” (-W) and the command will go straight to the create file dialogue box.

Hopefully, more sub commands and short cuts in the blog.