AutoCAD Layer Management – Naming Layers, Layer Filters, Layer States

By John Flanagan

Creating and Assigning Layers

A layering scheme is one of the most important organizing tools in any drawing. A standard layer scheme should be included in your template drawings. Use the Layer Properties Manager to create new layers and change the properties or status of existing layers, as shown.

Layer Properties Manager

The Layer Properties Manager is a palette and can stay open while you are working in the drawing. It can also be docked and hidden to create space in the drawing area. When layers are modified in the Layer Properties Manager, the changes are automatically applied to the drawing and listed in the Layer Control list in the Home tab >Layers panel.

Layer Properties Manager

• When you create layers, you set their colour, linetype, lineweight, and plot or no-plot status, and the plot style (if applicable).
• Layers defined in a template establish a consistent layer standard for all drawings based on that template.
• The icon in the Status column indicates whether the layer contains objects, does not contain objects or is the current layer.

Tip: To create several new layers quickly, click New Layer once and type the layer names separated by a comma.
 

Naming Layers

Within our drawing template we are going to have our layers named using a good naming convention (look at National CAD Standards). Note the naming conventions used on the previous illustration of the Layer Properties Manager. All the Annotation Layers have the abbreviation A-Anno, the main Architectural Layers have an A- in front of them, and the General Layers have G-Anno in front of them. Naming the layers this way enables us to use Layer Filters.

Layer Filters                                                               

In the Layer Properties, we will filter by name. We can set it up so that if the name starts with G-* then all the layers that are general layers will show up in this list.

Layer Filter Properties

Click OK and you can see a General Filter has been added and only the G-Anno layers show up. This applies not only to our Layer Properties Manager, but also our Layer Property drop-down. To invert the filter, click the Invert Filter box in the bottom left corner. Now everything but the General layers show up.

Layer Property Drop Down

Layer States

One additional item within our Layer Property Manager that we can define within our Drawing Template are Layer States.

When working on a complex drawing there are times when you might want to turn some layers off, freeze some layers, and change the layer properties of others. If you ever want to return to this set of layers and their properties, using layer states makes it easy. A layer state is like a snapshot of the existing layers and layer settings at the time the layer state is created. A layer state is saved to the drawing and can be restored at any time. You can also export the layer state and import it to another drawing. Other uses for layer states include:

• Store the initial state of the layers in a client drawing, before working on it

• If CAD standards change, you can use a layer state to update the properties of layers to match the new CAD standards.

• Apply the same layer overrides to several different viewports.