Subject: Working with other files in your drawings

Blocks, attributes, and external references provide mechanisms for managing entities in your drawings and for including additional information with the standard drawing entities. With blocks, you can combine numerous entities into a single entity, and then reuse it, inserting multiple copies. With attributes, you can associate text, such as part numbers or prices, with blocks, and then extract the text-attribute information to a separate file, such as a database, for further analysis. With external references, you can link separate reference drawing files to a drawing to combine information without adding the contents of the reference drawings to the current drawing. If you make changes to the referenced file, all references are updated automatically.

This section explains how to:

•   Create, insert, and redefine blocks.

•   Create, edit, and insert attributes.

•   Extract attribute data to a separate file.

•   Attach and work with external references and underlays.

•   Link and update data between drawings and spreadsheets.

•   Use images in your drawings.

•   Use a geographic location in your drawings.

Tell me about...

Working with blocks

Working with attributes

Working with external references

Attaching underlays created in other file formats

Working with data links

Working with images

Working with geographic locations