Organizing drawings with AutoCAD - 5 Section

22.4 Layer States

As we have mentioned, a complex project in Autocad can have hundreds of layers. These, as we have just seen, can be filtered so that only the group of them with which we should work is seen. Now suppose that, in turn, many of these layers are deactivated, others are unused, some more have been blocked so that the objects they contain can not be edited and, finally, we have created them, as will be seen later, different styles of traced to manipulate the printing of planes in various ways. With what we have the layers in a special state in two senses. On the one hand, the set has been applied a filter that hides some in the list of the Administrator and makes others see and, on the other hand, each one keeps a special situation in its various parameters. What would happen if tomorrow we want to give the layers, again, this special configuration? Better yet, what would happen if we apply another filter, deactivate and disable others and, in general, we apply multiple changes again and, for obvious needs, we want to return to the configuration of yesterday? That's what Layer States are for, which, in reality, are just small files where the current parameters of the layers are saved to be restored when desired.
To each layer State we give a name and then we can call it so that the Administrator presents the list of layers and the corresponding parameters contained in that state. This idea of ​​recording parameters of a certain type for reuse after we have seen it before, for example, in Text Styles, User Profiles, Object Groups and View Administration, so it does not seem necessary to extend ourselves in the underlying concept of layers states, so we will see how they are recorded and restored.

Layer states, in turn, can also become a list, so sooner or later it is necessary to administer it. Let's take a look at the Layer Status Manager, which can be opened either from the Layer Manager or from the drop-down list of layer states. Given the experience you have regarding the different administrators of Autocad, we are sure that it is not necessary to elaborate on this.

22.5 Conversion of layers

A very interesting feature of Autocad is the conversion of layers. This process homogenizes the layers of one drawing to the layers of another or of a file with the standards of layers.
In other words, if you receive a drawing from another person with different layer standards than yours, you can simply convert those layers to those that are equivalent in your drawings, for example, those of walls, with the layer that has walls in yours, those of facilities, etcetera. When converting the layers, they will not only change their name, their objects will also acquire the properties that you have assigned them.
Another advantage of this same dialog box is that it makes it possible to clearly distinguish all those layers that are not referenced in the drawing, that is, they do not contain objects and, therefore, are not being used, which is not at all improbable in drawings that grow in complexity.
The layer converter can be found in the Manage tab, in the CAD Standards section.
To convert the layers of the current drawing to those of some preset list, we must load those model layers from another drawing or template with the “Load” button. Then you have to select the layer to convert and the layer that it will be converted into and press the “Map” button, so that both layers will appear in the list at the bottom of the dialog box, where the properties that the layer will acquire are shown. converted.

Suppose now that we will receive many drawings with the same list of layers and that we will always convert them to the layer criteria of our drawings. In those cases, we can save the assignment we just saw for future use with the button of the same name and area. Finally, to change the layers, we use the “Convert” button, which will conclude the process.

 

22.6 Buttons in the Layers section

Finally, let's take care of the rest of the buttons of the section that we are studying and that you will easily find on your screen. These commands serve to take advantage of the disposition of the objects in layers, manipulating them in different ways. Many of these tools are of obvious use with what has been seen so far, so we can list them quickly:

- Set the object layer as current. We illustrate its use as an example. As its name implies, we select any object of the drawing and use this option, the layer in which it resides will become the active layer. The new objects drawn will be part of this layer.
- Previous. It would seem that, therefore, this command makes the immediate previous layer active. Not necessarily. In fact, it returns the arrangement of layers to their previous state, which may imply not only return to the previous layer, but to change the state of several of them, disabled, unused, and so on.
- Equalize. Changes the layer of the selected objects to the layer of a target object. It is therefore a quick method to leave various objects in a single layer.
- Change to current layer. It is similar to the previous one, only that instead of choosing an object to match its layer, the layers of the selected objects are matched to the current layer.
- Copy objects in a new layer. Copies of the selected objects are created in a layer other than those of those objects. To indicate the target layer, an object of that layer must be indicated.
- Isolate layers. Disables all layers, except for the selected objects.
- Isolate layers in the current graphic window. As we will see in the 29.3 section, it is possible to have on the screen an array of windows (called graphics) showing different views of the same drawing. Therefore, this command, like the previous one, deactivates the layers of the non-selected objects, but only in the current graphic window, leaving the layers active in the rest of the windows.
- Stripping layers. Reverses the effect of the two previous options.
- Deactivate layers. It is the inverse procedure to the previous ones, it deactivates the layers of the selected objects.
- Activate all layers. Well, what can I tell you not to know already?

In fact, the same thing happens with “Disable Layers” and “Lock Layers”, with the differences that have already been exposed above.

- Merge. Move objects from one layer to another and remove the first one from the drawing.
- Suppress. Remove a layer from the drawing.

The button that we have omitted until now is To go through the layers, which is a simple method to give a global idea of ​​the arrangement of the objects and administration of the layers in a drawing. When using it, a dialog box opens with a list of all available layers. When clicking on any layer, all the others are deactivated, showing only the objects of the selected layer. As the dialog box remains on the screen, it is possible to click on another layer, so that, once again, only its objects will be visible and so on until, precisely, all the layers are scanned if desired.