Layers

Organize your drawing by assigning objects to layers.

When a drawing becomes visually complex, you can hide the objects that you currently do not need to see.

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In the drawing below, the doors and electrical wiring were temporarily hidden by turning off their layers.

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You gain this level of control by organizing the objects in your drawing on layers that are associated with a specific function or a purpose. It might be helpful to think of layers as clear plastic sheets:

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With layers, you can:

Important: Resist the temptation to create everything on one layer. Layers are the most important organizing feature available in AutoCAD drawings.

Layer Controls

Click the Layers tab on the left side panel.

Here's what the Layer Properties Manager displays in this drawing.

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The highlighted layer 10 WALLS is the current layer. All new objects are automatically placed on that layer.

Turn layers on and off In the above image, notice the light bulb icons next to two of the layers. These layers were turned off to hide the doors and electrical wiring in the floor plan. Turn layers on and off by clicking the light bulb.

Lock layers Also notice the lock icon next to two of the layers. Objects on locked layers can't be modified in the drawing until they are unlocked.

Practical Recommendations

Maintain Your Standards

It's important either to establish or to conform to a company-wide layer standard. With a layer standard, drawing organization will be more logical, consistent, compatible, and maintainable over time and across departments. Layer standards are essential for team projects.

Summary

Layers organize your drawing, enabling you to temporarily suppress the display of unneeded graphical data. You can also assign default properties such as color and linetype to each layer.

Note: Some experienced AutoCAD users set properties only by changing layers, while others set properties independently of layers or in combination with layers. Assigning properties to objects is covered in the Properties topic.

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