Layer display states and properties

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Let's talk about the layers themselves, their states and their properties.

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I'll be using a single layer in my examples.

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But what you'll see will appear to all layers you have selected,

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first of all, just to the left of the layer name is the status column.

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A green check mark means it's the current layer

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in our example file,

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all of the other layers on the first page of the list have light blue trapezoids.

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That means they have objects on that layer. A

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white trapezoid indicates that the layer doesn't contain any objects.

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There are six other icons that can appear

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based on things like viewport and override status.

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Next is the layer name column note.

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Also the little up arrow on the right side of the column title

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that's indicating that the list is sorted in an ascending manner via this column.

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You can sort on any column you like

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just click on the column header to sort on it or reverse the sort on that column

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here.

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I'll click on the color header to sort by color, either ascending or descending.

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This is very common too.

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It's an easy way to group your layers by color

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display status or whatever property you need.

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Now come the display states which is our focus for this video for this exercise,

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set up your editor to look similar to this so

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that you can see most of the ground floor plan

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first is on off.

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It's shown as either a yellow light bulb or on or a blue light bulb or off.

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Turning a layer to off keeps the layers from displaying,

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click on the light bulb next to the A

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AO

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dims.

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You should see that the dimensions in the ground floor plan are no longer displayed.

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Let's turn it back on by clicking the icon again.

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Next to that is the freeze thaw icon shown as

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a yellow sun when thawed and as a blue snowflake,

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when frozen

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click on it to freeze a

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anodes,

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you should see that the dimensions in the ground floor plan are no longer displayed

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exactly the same as one off.

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You're probably wondering why.

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So I'll offer a very brief history lesson

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back in the early days of Autocad memory resources were scarce,

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turning a layer off simply suppressed its display,

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but it was still considered to be rebuilt during a region

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freezing was developed, not only to suppress the display but to also

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in essence, hide it from the graphics engine. In theory, regions would be faster

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in time computers got better and today they appear to do exactly the same thing.

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Most companies choose one or the other as a standard practice,

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sometimes they use on off for temporary short term changes

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and freeze thaw for long term.

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However,

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there's never a good reason to set them both for

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the same layer one or the other will do.

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All right.

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Next is lock shown as an open padlock when unlocked and a closed padlock when locked,

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when locked

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a layer is still visible, although it will appear faded,

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it cannot be selected for editing commands

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but it can be selected and snapped to for creating geometry.

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Click on the lock icon for the A

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anodes layer,

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you should see the dimensions on the ground floor plan have become faded.

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Hover over one of the dimensions.

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You should see a small lock badge next to your cursor,

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start a line command near the dimension,

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drag 0.2 near the locked dimension. So that an O snap appears.

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This is an example of using a locked entity to accurately place geometry.

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I'll just escape to get out of our example.

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You can adjust the amount of fading that is applied to a locked layer.

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Click on the gear icon in the upper right.

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This will display the layer settings dialogue

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among a lot of other tools and settings.

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You'll find a slider that lets you control the amount of fading for locked layers,

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pull the slider left to decrease the fading or to the right to increase it.

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Let's set it to about 80%.

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Click the OK button and you'll see that our locked

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layer is now much more faded than it was.

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You could set the fade control to 0% to display it without fading.

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But the fade provides a nice visual cue that the layer is locked.

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And most people like having it on.

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If you prefer,

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you can also find the locked layer fade control.

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In the additional tools portion of the layers panel in the ribbon,

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you may like it this way better

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as it updates the layer fade in real time as you change the slider

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better yet.

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If you know your preferred value,

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just click on the percentage value and change it there.

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I'll demonstrate that by setting it back to 50%

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I'll unlock a

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anodes by clicking on its lock icon and close the layer properties manager.