Layers
Make them, set their defaults, and control what is visible, locked or plotted.
3 min read
Making a layer
- In the explorer, under Layers, choose New layer.
- Name it the way your office names layers.
- Set its colour, line style or named linetype, weight and default point style.
- Save. Anything you draw while it is the active layer takes those defaults.
The active layer
The active layer is named in the ribbon chip and highlighted in the explorer. Clicking a layer's name in the explorer makes it active; so does choosing it in the ribbon. The two always agree.
Visibility and locking
- The eye hides a layer, and everything on it, including labels.
- The padlock locks it: still visible, not selectable, so you cannot nudge reference linework by accident.
- Hidden layers do not plot. What you see is what prints.
Contours off means all contours off
Turning contours off hides the reference lines from the surface and the drawn contour entities and their elevation labels. A toggle that left half of them on screen would be lying about what it does.
Every import is a layer of its own
An orthophoto, a point file, a point cloud and a surface each arrive as their own import, named for the file it came from. Each is listed and switched by itself: every import has an eye in the Explorer on the left, the same eye a layer has, and the Layers panel lists them under Reference. A site with three point files can show one of them. A cloud with ground-classified points offers “Ground points only” beneath its row.
- The switch takes effect immediately and is saved: the drawing opens the same way next time.
- It is display only. Hiding an import never changes the points it holds, the cloud's file, or the triangulation a volume was taken from.
- Imports are listed apart from the drawing's own layers because they are not entities of the drawing, an orthophoto has no colour, linetype or weight to set.
Read next
- Drawing: tools, the command line and snapsHow to draw, how to be quick about it, and how to make things land exactly where you mean.
- Linetypes and line stylesFifty linetypes named in plain words, how to apply them, and how to change a line's style without touching its layer.
- Point styles and labelsChoose a symbol, size it in millimetres, and arrange the labels the way your office wants them.
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