Bill of quantity
We all have to take care of the quantity of different materials in our projects. After all, everyone’s first concern is the price. This is why it is crucial for us to be aware of quantities in every moment during the design of our project.
Using Blocks is one of the best way to keep our drawings tidy and have full control over quantities in the best way possible. However, if we have hundreds of blocks in a drawing it is hard to count them manually. Here AutoCAD with its powerful tools comes in handy!
There are several methods of counting blocks.05
By using DataExtraction tool
This is by far the best method, DataExtraction is so powerful that it gives much more information about objects (not only blocks) like: Coordinates, descriptions, elevations, attribute definitions and much, much more! However, this power needs some time to be used. And if we want to know the number of block objects in the drawing, it will be inefficient. This is because DataExtraction needs a lot of setting up to give us the number of different block types in the drawing.
Quick Select & Select similar
If we want to have fast quantities this is a good method. The only problem is that we again have to perform a lot of clicking and setting up. Even if different blocks are in different layers and previously organized we will again have to select only one type. Then select similar – write down the number, then again for the second type and so on.
BCOUNT – Automatic Block Count
This is a tool part of Express tools and could be very useful in our case. It creates a report of the number of instances of each block in a selection set or in the entire drawing.
To use the Tool we just have to Type in BCOUNT in the command line. AutoCAD will ask us to select objects. By using a selection method we can either select the blocks that we want to itemize, or press Enter to include all the blocks in the current drawing. The report will be displayed in the Command window.
Note: This method doesn’t work for dynamic blocks!
Manual
Of course, if someone wants can count manually.
