Tipster Danny Korem shares a tip on working with blocks that need annotations by using AutoCAD groups in conjunction.

“Usually when I’m conducting a training course, I instruct the students to create geometry-only blocks. This means no dimensions or annotations. Sometimes users err when creating blocks for editing manipulations such as mirror, rotate, etc.

“The group functionality has been unknown to many users for years, but it has made a comeback. In the case of mirroring, you should create a geometry-only block and group it with annotations. In this way, you can manipulate the group. Then if the block needs editing at some stage, turn the group selection off, select the block, right-click for block editor, and that’s it.”
 
Notes from Cadalyst tip reviewer Brian Benton: There are two ways to link objects in AutoCAD: blocks and groups. Blocks lock together all the linework, text, dimensions, or whatever is there. When you make any change to the block, all its objects are affected. Groups are a bit different. You can relax the items so that you can easily manipulate specific members of the group. This can make editing the individual bits of geometry easier than having to go to the block editor to make a change.