Begin by starting DesignCAD. In this session you’ll be working with a drawing created specifically for this tutorial. No changes to the toolbars or program display are necessary.

Download the layering example.dcd file to your hard drive. Click here to download a zip file containing Layering Example.dcd.

Once opened, the drawing will appear as below:

Click this small thumbnail image to see a larger view.

Displaying and Changing an Object's Layer

An object’s primary layer information is accessed via the DesignCAD Info Box. Start by selecting an object in the drawing. Any object will be fine for this example. You can display the Info Box by pressing CTRL+I, or by selecting the info box command from the view menu.

The layer is displayed at the top of the Info Box, just under the title bar. Notice that there is a down‑arrow on the right side of the layer readout, indicating that you can display and scroll through the available layers in the drawing.

DesignCAD drawings always have 255 or 1000 available layers (depending on the version of DesignCAD), and drawing objects may be located in any of these layers. You change the object’s current layer by choosing a new layer in its Info Box. In this drawing, all of the objects are on Layer 1. You're going to change this, though.

Changing Only the Layers of Certain Entity Types

Typically you’ll end up organizing drawing details based on the type of drawing object they happen to be. The type of drawing object is commonly referred to as the Entity Type.

An entity might be an arc, a curve, a dimension, or a line, etc. Let's name one of the layers "Text" and move all of the text entities in the drawing to that layer.

Open the Layer Options

Close the Info Box and press the L key on your keyboard to open the Layer Options folder.

Changing the Name of Layer 2

Click on 2 in the layer list to select its options for editing, then click in the name field at the top of the Layer Options folder. Enter Text for the layer name, then press the Tab key on your keyboard. Notice that DesignCAD recognizes the change when you pressed Tab and the word text appears to the right of the number for Layer 2. Click the apply button, and then the ok button at the bottom of the Options dialog box.

Select all Text in the drawing

The next step is to choose all of the drawing’s text for the layer change. Since we want to affect only the text and not the other types of entities in the drawing we’ll need to filter the drawing so that text entities are all that the mouse can choose.

Select the selection filter command from the edit menu. The Selection Filter dialog box appears, offering a variety of ways to filter the selection in the drawing. In this case, the Entity Type needs to be filtered, so click the entity type tab. Click 2-d text in the entity type list and then click the add button to the right. Click the new selection button to select the 2-D text in the drawing. Click close.

Notice that only the text in the drawing has been selected. Now press Ctrl+I to open the Info Box again. Use the layer list in the Info Box to change the layer of the text to Layer 2 – which will now display the title "Text" for clarity.

For practice try using the Selection Filter and Info Box to move the Dimensions to Layer 3.

Locking and Hiding Layers

Now that you’ve seen how easy it is to switch the layers on both random and specific object types, it’s time to learn how to safeguard your work from accidental editing later in the drawing process.

By default all layers in a drawing are visible and editable, but often you’ll need to turn off layers that you’re not presently working with. Hiding layers decreases the amount of time needed for visual comprehension of drawing data. Making layers uneditable prevents item from accidentally being selected and edited. To deal with cases like these, you’ll need to understand a few layer basics.

Display the Layer Options

Press L to display the Layer Options folder, or select the options command from the options menu and then click on the layer tab to bring the folder to the front. Each of the following options is available for any layer. Only the selected layers in the layer list are affected when the status of one or both of these options is changed.

•           Visible-This option will prevent you from seeing or editing the selected layer. An excellent way to speed up drawing redraws as well as speeding your own visual comprehension in drawings consisting of many objects.

•           Editable-This option enables/disables the ability to select, and thus edit objects on the selected layer. Useful when objects must be seen to properly create or position other objects, but need to be free from accidental edits.

Highlight any layer (other than the current layer; the current layer is always visible and editable), then click the Visible or Editable checkbox to control its editability and visibility in the current drawing.