Because users today are more acclimated to Windows than some of us old dogs who started using AutoCAD in DOS, I see people copy and paste from drawing to drawing. So, the question is:
When should I use Copy & Paste?
First, Copy and Paste are Windows commands. They copy whatever you select to the Windows Clipboard and then make it available to Paste in any Windows program. It's often overused because it's so easy.
The general Copy and Paste commands copy the entities in whatever native format they are in. so if you copy something from a web page and paste it in Word, it generally comes is as html or something other than basic text.
In most Windows programs, there is also a Paste Special command. This can be found under the Edit pulldown menu in most cases. Using Paste Special provides you with the ability to choose how you are going to paste. You can paste something in Word for example as unformatted text. You can paste something in AutoCAD as a type of AutoCAD object.
In AutoCAD, you can choose various copy and paste commands from the Edit pulldown menu as well. You can copy with a base point or paste as a block. When you paste as a block, AutoCAD makes up a name for the block that is a series of letter and numbers. You can tell when someone has done a lot of copy and paste when you look at the names of the blocks in a drawing and see names like that.
Why shouldn't you use copy and paste? If you are using something more than once, then you should take the time to make it a block and save it in a block library. This is when WBLOCK comes in handy. This is also a possible use for Tool Palettes if you have similar types of blocks that you will be using often.
Depending on what you copy and paste and how you do it, you can increase a drawing file size. You also will still have a number of individual entities to contend with unless you paste as a block. If you're going to do that, then you probably should have just made a block to begin with.
Having a block library meets one of the two Cardinal Rules of CAD that my first CAD instructor taught me. Never draw anything twice. This goes for copying and pasting too.
If you do have notes or text that do not fit the bill to be made into a block, then start a piece of MTEXT and right click inside the text window to paste. This will keep the formatting for your text from MSWord and paste it exactly as it was written.
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