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BLKRPT LISP: Block Count Report for AutoCAD Drawings

September 18, 2020

Last updated July 28, 2026

BLKRPT counts how many times each block is inserted in your drawing and produces a report. The report appears on screen and is written to a file at the same time, so you have something to keep rather than a screenful of numbers that scrolls away.

It is by Jon Shapiro, version 2.0, dated 27 January 1991 — and it announces itself when it loads, which is a courtesy worth having when you are working out which of several files gave you a command.

A block count is a schedule

Worth spelling out, because “count the blocks” sounds like housekeeping and is often something more useful.

If your symbols are blocks, a count of them is a count of the things they represent. Forty-two of the door symbol is forty-two doors. Eighteen of the double GPO is eighteen double power points. That is the beginning of a schedule or a bill of quantities, produced from the drawing rather than by someone counting on screen with a pencil.

It is also a good drawing check. A count that includes blocks you did not know were in there tells you something arrived with a copied detail, and a count of one for something that should appear a dozen times tells you the other eleven were exploded at some point.

Where the file goes

The report is saved next to your drawing, using the drawing’s own name with a .BLR extension. So a report for your floor plan turns up as the same name with a different ending.

That naming means running it again overwrites the previous report rather than accumulating them, which is usually what you want. It also means the report is a plain text file you can open in anything — the documentation suggests viewing or printing it with DOS commands, which dates the file, but the point stands: it is text, so any editor will do, and it will paste into a spreadsheet.

Worth knowing that the routine needs somewhere it can write. If your drawing is on a read-only location, expect the file half of the job to fail.

Command reference

The file defines a single command, BLKRPT.

How to load it

Unzip Blkrpt.zip and load BLKRPT.LSP with APPLOAD. It prints its name and version as it loads, so you will know it arrived. No support files. Our AutoLISP guide covers loading.

Step-by-step usage

  1. Save the drawing first, so the report file is named after something that exists on disk.
  2. Type BLKRPT.
  3. Read the report on screen.
  4. Find the .BLR file alongside your drawing and open it in a text editor if you want to keep or share it.

If the counts look wrong, check whether the blocks you are after have been exploded — an exploded block is no longer a block and will not be counted, which is exactly the discrepancy worth catching.

Compatibility notes

January 1991, so written-for rather than tested-on. It reads the block table and writes a text file, both long-standing operations — the file writing is the part most worth testing first, since that is where old routines most often stumble.

Plain AutoLISP with no dialog boxes and no Express Tools calls, so nothing requires the full product; LT users on LT 2024 or later, the release that brought AutoLISP to LT, should be able to run it. See what runs on AutoCAD LT. It reads the drawing and writes a separate file, so nothing in your drawing is altered.

Download

Name: Block Count Report
Description: The routine counts the number of inserts for each block,
on your drawing, and develops a report.
Type: AutoCAD AutoLISP Routine
Author: Anon
File Size: 3 Kb
Cost: Free
Worked on: AutoCAD
Download File: Blkrpt.zip

The listing records the author as Anon; the file itself credits Jon Shapiro.

Related routines

  • Block Count — a simpler count without the file output.
  • WBLKALL — export the blocks you found to individual drawings.
  • Block to BYLAYER — tidy the block definitions once you know what you have.

References

  • AutoLISP: the complete guide
  • Free LISP routines library
  • AutoLISP Lesson 10: Input and Output
  • AutoLISP on AutoCAD LT

Filed Under: AutoLISP Routines

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