Best practice for refreshing GIS data in ACAD

[Roberts_Craig]

I recently overwrote a large amount of data on our servers by editing a block, adding a default value, then clicking "Synchronize All".  The default value replaced the attributes for all the features on the server.  Doh!  (Luckily we were able to recover from backup).  Apparently this is not the way to update your blocks after editing them.  (I was using AFA 370, we are now on 400)

My question is:  What is the best way to refresh your data in ACAD after editing blocks?  I often need to edit the blocks many times before I am satisfied.  Currently I remove the layer the re-add it.  Is there a better way?

[DonKuehne · Accepted solution]

To apply changes to blocks of a web feature layer without making sweeping changes to the features of the layer you should use the Discard All Edits option.  Synchronize will take what it perceives as changes in the drawing and update the feature service.  Discard edits only updates the drawing from the web feature layer from the feature service and when it does that it will use your new block definition.   Using an AutoCAD tool to modify the blocks in place will be perceived as an editing of each block and by extension each GIS feature, as you experienced.  The best practice to update the representation of your web features as blocks is to edit the block definition or choose a different block and then use the discard edits option when you want to "refresh" the representation of the web feature layer in your drawing with your updated blocks.

[Roberts_Craig]

Thank you Don.  I was a little gun-shy after I overwrote the data.  This helps.