AutoCAD 2020 - New Improved Blocks Palette

By John Flanagan

Introduction

Autodesk has improved the way blocks are inserted with the newly designed blocks palette. The palette now includes visual thumbnails of blocks making it easier to insert blocks from the current drawing, recent or other drawing tab. Users can filter for the exact blocks they’re searching for and drag and drop them into a project drawing.

Insert Blocks Efficiently With The New Improved Blocks Palette

The Insert dialog box has been redesigned with visual thumbnails to provide a better preview of available blocks to insert. The palette includes three tabs: Current Drawing, Recent, and Other Drawing.

The Current Drawing tab displays all the block definitions in the current drawing either as icons or as a list.

The Recent tab displays the most recently inserted blocks either as icons or a list, regardless of the current drawing. These persist between drawings and sessions. (You can remove a block from this tab by right-clicking the block and choosing Remove from Recent List.)

The Other Drawing tab provides a way of navigating to folders from which you can choose drawings either to insert as blocks or to choose from the blocks defined in those drawings. These drawings and blocks also persist between drawings and sessions.

The top of the palette includes several controls, including a field for applying wildcard filters to the block names, and several options for various thumbnail sizes and list styles.

To insert blocks from the palette into your drawing, simply drag and drop the selected block. Or you can click on the block and place it into the drawing for more accuracy.

A Repeat Placement option has been added to save you steps and further speed up your workflow. There are also handy Insertion Options such as Insertion Point, Scale, Rotation, and more.

No more  searching through block names in a long drop-down list. The Blocks gallery keeps a list of the blocks you’ve recently used, so you no longer have the task of remembering what drawings they were in.

This is a great new feature in AutoCAD 2020 as it makes using reusable content such as blocks even easier!