Blocks - Best practice

[pogocad]

Hi
I use blocks that consist of other blocks, i.e. block 'Screw' that consists of the blocks 'Head', 'Shaft and 'Nut'. Only the block 'Screw' ist used in the drawing.
Now, is it better do dissolve the subblocks and make a block 'Screw' without subblocks or using a block 'Screw' with all the subblocks. The example is simple, my blocks are more complex.

Regards

[ryancousins]

I'm sure there are other people that might have good thoughts about this but in my mind, I would make that choice based on whether or not I think it would ever be possible that I would want to make changes to those sub-blocks at some later time, especially if those sub blocks are used in more than one master block. Once you Explode ("dissolve") those blocks that you used to create other blocks, you would lose that ability to do so and have those changes propagate automatically if used more than once. But you are right that leaving it the way it is now adds a layer of complexity to your file. If you are confident that you will never need to make changes to the sub blocks, I think you'd be okay to explode them and re-make your overall block as it's own self-contained entity. As far as there being an official best practice, I have no idea about that.

[pogocad]

The reason for that post was that I bought a technical drawing of a model steam loco and every single part is a block. I've never seen that before!

THX

[ryancousins]

Gottcha. You could always keep that original with all the blocks saved somewhere as a backup and create a new duplicate file where you join all of those files together to make one block to simplify things if that makes sense for what your plans are with the file going forward. But then you'd always have that original if you needed to go back and make a change to one of the individual blocks.

Now I want to go build a model train layout in my basement!