8   Working With Layers

Fig. 3: The layer list shows the layers of the current drawing.

I recommend to use layers for your drawing. If you put different parts of the drawing on different layers you can do the same action (e.g. moving) with those objects much faster. Further, it's possible to hide some layers for shortening the refresh process and getting a clearer overview of the drawing.

If you create new objects, they get constructed on the current layer. The current layer is the one which you've clicked at last. It's highlighted with black background and white text. If no layer is selected, the current layer is layer "default".

Layers have default attributes for the elements created on them. You can speed up your work much if you create different layers for the contour, auxiliary lines, hatches, texts and dimensions. For example you might want to create a layer "CONTOUR" with a line width of 2, Black color and the line style "solid". Further you can create a layer "AUXILIARY" with a line width of 1, Red color and the line style "dash-doted". During construction you can just switch the layer "AUXILIARY" if you want to create an auxiliary line and switch it back to contour to proceed drawing a contour.

Click this button in the toolbar at the top or choose the menu "View" -> "Show layer list" to show the layer list or hide it, if it's already visible. The layer list offers some tools and of course it shows a list of all layers in the drawing. You can show / hide a single layer by double-clicking on its name.

Click to show all layers of the drawing.

Click to hide all layers of the drawing.

You can add new layers to the drawing with this function. The appearing dialog allows you to choose a name for the new layer and to define the default attributes for the objects on the layer.

This will remove the current (selected) layer. If there are objects on the current layer, you get asked if you're sure that you want to delete all these objects on it.
Note: You can't undo this function.

Select the Layer, you want to rename or change its attributes and click this button. The same dialog appears as if you add new layers. You can change the attributes and type a new name for the layer.

This function is provided for convenience. It allows you to remove all empty layers of the drawing. Note: Layers may look empty but don't get removed because they contain deleted objects in the undo memory. You can still delete these layers with the remove function.