Mechanical engineer Perry Pattiz explains why bursting an object before you manipulate it in AutoCAD is often a better choice than exploding it.

"Many times I receive drawings from other people with attributes on them (legend plates on an electrical enclosure, for example), and I want to copy the item to a different drawing. If you do a simple Copy and Paste, the attribute values don't transfer with the item. All that comes through is the item with the attribute tags, and not the values. If you explode the item, you just get the same list of attribute tag names and not the values. The solution to this problem is to use the Burst command before you copy the item; it will explode the item but leave the values in place instead of replacing them with the tag names."

Notes from Cadalyst tip reviewer Brian Benton: Burst is different from Explode in that it leaves the inserted values of attributed text intact and converts them to regular text objects. Explode reverts the attributes to their tags and leaves them as attributes; this makes them difficult to work with, as tags cannot have spaces.