March 23, 2015

AutoCAD 03

Organising information with layers

Layers are overlays which help you to manage complex drawings. You separate the objects into layers
according to meaningful categories. AutoCAD allows you to turn off layers of a drawing that are not
important so that you can print only a drawing containing desired information.

Creating and assigning layers tool

Below is the Layer Properties Manager. Display it using Home > Layer Properties or type LA and then
press enter at the command prompt. This tool shows you the status of your layers.`

Create a new layer

The New layer button is at the top of the palette. This button has an icon that looks like a star next to a
sheet.

A new layer named Layer 1 appears in the list box which you can rename. After typing an appropriate
name, you can assign a colour to that layer. See next figure. Then close this menu.

Above tha layer list you can see four tool buttons:

At the command prompt, you can also type "-Layer" without the quotes and then press enter. You will
get the following prompt:

If youhave to create a new layer, simply type the first letter N for New.

Assigning layers to objects

If you just are using one layer as you have been doing till now, all objects on the drawing are assigned
to this current layer. You can creat some layers first and then assign some objects from your current
layer known as layer 0 to other layers. To do this, you will use the Properties palette.

Select the objects that you want to transfer to another layer. Open the properties palette (shown above)
and click on the layer option on the list in the Properties palette. Notice that an arrow appears in the
layer name to the right of the Layer option. Click on the down-pointing arrow to the far right of the layer
option to display a list of all available layers which you have created. Now you can select any layer that
you wish your selected objects will be moved to. Close the Properties palette and press Esc. The Quick
properties panel shown below is useful as the Properties palette to change the colour, layer and linetype
of objects.

Controlling layer visibility

When you would like to work on just a particular layer, then it is appropriate to turn off other layers so as
not to let them distract you in your work. This can be done via the Layer Properties Manager by clicking
the Layer Properties tool in the Layers Panel. The lightbulb icon when changed from yellow to gray
indicates that a layer is turned off.
You can also control layer visibility by using the layer drop-down list on the layers panel:

Layer management tasks

If you work on a complex drawing with several layers then chances are that you will easily get lost
and be overwhelmed by the amount of complexity of your drawing and you can experience difficulty
to keep track of the layers. AutoCAD has some tools in the Layer Properties Manager that help with
your layer-management tasks. See next figure.

From the above drawing, in the upper-left corner of the palette is a toolbar with three tools:
1. The New Property Filter tool lets you filter your list of layers to display only layers with certain
properties, such as specific colours or names.
2. The New Group Filter tool lets you create named groups of layers that can be quickly recalled at any
time. This tool is helpful if you often work with specific sets of layers e.g. layers of electrical layouts
in an architectural drawing.
3. The Layer State Manager tool lets you create sets of layer states. An example is that in an
architectural drawing, you can save a set of layers that have "doors" visible.

Note that you have other advanced layer options such as Freeze, Lock etc. See AutoCAD's help for
information on these options.

Adding linetypes to layers

When you select a layer in the Layer Properties Manager, you can load a linetype and assign it to the
layer.

Click on the load button in the menu of the previous figure to see a list of linetypes which you can pick
from.

The following figure gives the standard, ISO, and complex AutoCAD linetypes:

Controlling linetype scale

Depending on the scale of your drawing, a DASHDOT line for instance can appear as a solid line when
in fact it is not. So you must at times adjust the scale of your linetypes accordingly. This can be
accomplished using the Linetype Manager dialog box. Click on the Linetype drop-down list in the Home
tab's Properties panel and select Other:

The Linetype Manager dialog box opens. Click the Show details button in the upper right corner of the
dialog box. Some additional optins appear at the bottom. See figure next:

Double-click on the Global Scale Factor text box and type in a suitable number. Similarly in the Layer
Properties Manager there is a Lineweight column.