I have mentioned color, linetype and lineweight properties of layers in my previous article. They can be considered as objective properties. But they are also status properties (special to layers, not found in objects). Let us examine the table below (Figure 1).

Figure 1

There are no differences left between layers turned on or off, frozen or thawed. The only difference is that turned off layers are included in the ‘Regenerating Model’, thus there is no need to regenerate again when they are turned on. But frozen layers are not included in screen operations and regeneration may be required when they are thawed. Current hardware’s provide fast processes, even the operation can not be recognized by the user. But still you may consider to freeze useless layers in complex drawings. Frozen and turned off layers are not included in physical and visual operations like MOVE or COPY. They are not also considered during rendering operation. Do not forget frozen or locked layers when you are scaling or moving the entire drawing.

Locked layers , however, are included in all visual operations. That means they are rendered and printed. But physical operations can not be done to those layers. These features of layers are used in template drawings.

The layers with plot function turned off are considered in all operations but disabled only during the plot.

Other options are only used in LAYOUT view and considered when a new viewport is opened. A layer will be considered as frozen in all viewports if it is set to ‘New VP Freeze’ which is an important option. You want to turn on or off different layers in different layouts if you plan to plot different views and details from a single drawing.

Explaining enough theoretical information, it is time to learn how to use them. To do this, we have ‘Layer Properties Manager Window’ (Figure 2).

Figure 2

To access thw window, you can simply type ‘LAYER’ or ‘LA’ into the command line. For those who do not like using the command line, there is also TOOLBAR (Figure 3).

Figure 3

Actually you can do various operations via toolbar, yet you have to open layer properties manager to create new layers or control layer operations.

In the next article, you are going to learn how to create and use a layer.

Related Articles:

• Layers [1]
• Linetype Scale
• Layer property filters in AutoCAD
• Hip tip: Organization of layers inside the blocks
• Hint: Use layers when modelling in 3D!
• AutoLISP application: LAY_DEL.LSP

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