New in AutoCAD 2021 – a More Capable Blocks Palette

I’ve been an AutoCAD user for a long time, about 25 years now. Many of the people I work with have also worked with AutoCAD for a long time, so you might think we’d have some deep AutoCAD discussions when we were face-to-face (back in our pre-pandemic days). But the truth is, quite often I just can’t find anyone to listen to me wax geometric about my love of AutoCAD.  But every now and again I’m asked, “Daron, what is your FAVORITE AutoCAD feature?”  And this, my friend, is one of those days!

AutoCAD 2021 came out in late March of this year (every AutoCAD user’s favorite time of year) and since then, I’ve realized my favorite new feature is the Blocks Palette.  Now you might say, “But the Blocks Palette is an AutoCAD 2020 feature,” and you are absolutely right!  But the smart folks at Autodesk saw fit to improve upon the Blocks Palette by adding the Blocks Library Tab – something that I think was the natural next step in the decades-long evolution of block insertion.

I’ll start at the beginning.  If AutoCAD could talk, it would say, “Blocks are compound objects that are commonly used for symbols, parts, detail views, and title blocks (or borders).”  Blocks keep AutoCAD users from having to repeatedly draw objects that appear in their drawings multiple times, thereby saving unimaginable amounts of time and work. 

My first introduction to the world of AutoCAD Blocks was the Insert Dialog Box.  This dialog box wowed me from the first because it allowed me to insert a drawing file, that I or someone else drew earlier, into my current drawing, and even rotate that drawing after I placed it!  For a drafter who started their career on a drafting table with T-squares, Triangles, and French Curves, that’s a pretty big deal.


Then Autodesk introduces the Block Gallery, an expandable panel that allows the user to see previews of the blocks currently inserted into their drawing before they insert them.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, a gallery must be worth million, right?


Finally, we get to 2020 and Autodesk gifts us with the Blocks Palette!  The Blocks Palette continues the trend away from dialog boxes and towards palettes that can be anchored to either side of the interface, or stashed on a separate monitor if the user has more than one monitor, and palettes don’t prevent the user from issuing unassociated commands while they’re open (imagine trying to pan or zoom while the Select File dialog box is open). 

The Blocks Palette is divided into three tabs.  The Current Drawing tab displays previews or a list (user’s preference) of block definitions available in the current drawing.

The Recent tab displays previews or a list of block definitions recently inserted or created in the current and previous sessions. These blocks can come from the current and other recent drawings.

The Libraries tab displays previews or a list of block definitions from a single, specified drawing or a folder. Attaching a drawing file to the Block Library also imports all of its block definitions onto the palette. Users can click the Browse control icon to the right of the Block Library Drawing Name Window at the top of the palette to browse to a different drawing file or folder to access additional blocks if necessary. 

The Blocks Palette as a whole is such a great addition to the AutoCAD Interface.  Most AutoCAD Users are visual by nature, and being able to see the blocks available to them like so many tools in a box is a no brainer. But being able to ‘load’ a Block Library into a Palette is a real stroke of genius!  Many AutoCAD Users – myself included – would insert a Block Library Drawing directly into their current drawing to gain access to the handful of blocks or symbols they needed for the current task.  This method adds more content to the current drawing than is actually necessary when one accounts for the blocks that go unused, any extra layers, line types, text styles and so on that are hosted in that Block Library Drawing.  The Libraries tab allows the user to see all the blocks associated with the Block Library Drawing well before inserting them and this makes for an extremely clean and efficient drawing file when all the work is said and done.

Now all of that would be more than enough to make the Block Palette my favorite feature alone, but then Autodesk went and made an Insertion Options area available at the base of all three tabs, which allows the user to specify their Insertion point, Scale and Rotation on screen just like the venerable old Insert Dialog box. THEN they went a step further by adding the Repeat Placement option that allows the user to repeatedly insert a selected block over and over again without restarting the command.  How cool is that!?

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