What is a Block?

To represent facilities items, such as equipment, telecom devices, and furniture located on a floor plan drawing, you use blocks. You can think of a block as a stencil or stamp that can repeatedly draw the same item in exactly the same way. Blocks are small CAD drawings designed to be embedded in larger drawings. They are typically drawn at full scale; a chair that is 30 cm wide and 30 cm tall is drawn 30 cm x 30 cm in the block drawing.

sample block drawing

For example, a floor plan drawing may contain a symbol representing a computer. This symbol is actually a reference to a block drawing. When you insert a block, you instruct the program to display a copy of the block drawing at a particular location. This is known as a block reference.

The following image shows a reference to the block drawing Chair.dwg (pictured above) inserted as a block reference in the upper right corner of the room. Notice that because the block drawing was created at the dimensions it represents, when a reference to this block drawing is inserted into a drawing, it displays at the appropriate scale.

floor plan drawing with inserted block

There are many advantages to using blocks to depict items in your floor plan drawings:

The same block can be repeatedly inserted throughout your drawings and can be accessed by multiple users, helping to ensure that floor plan drawings are consistent and follow standards.
Blocks can reduce drawing time because you only need to define the block once; then, whenever you need the block, you call the block definition and insert a reference to the block.
Blocks reduce drawing size because the block definition is stored in just one place and multiple references to the block are added to the drawing.

Block drawings typically hold their contents on the drawing's Layer 0. Items stored on Layer 0 take on the properties, such as color, of the layer on which they are inserted; therefore, by storing a block's contents on Layer 0, you can use the same block on many layers.

Note Full scale blocks are drawn in proportion to the items they represent. ARCHIBUS also works with unit blocks, which are drawn one unit by one unit.

To open a block drawing

Start your drawing tool and open your ARCHIBUS project.
From the Ribbon, click the Utilities/Graphic Commands/Open Block Drawing command.
Choose a .DWG file from the Open dialog box, moving to the directory in which you store block drawings.

Note: If you open a block drawing and nothing appears, click View/Navigate/Zoom/Extents from the Ribbon. Since many block drawings are small, the blocks may not appear until the zoom is adjusted.