From the course: AutoCAD for Mac 2019 Essential Training

Layer tools - AutoCAD for Mac Tutorial

From the course: AutoCAD for Mac 2019 Essential Training

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Layer tools

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- [Narrator] Using layers allows us to not only visually identify our objects, but it also allows us to display layers or not display layers for ease of editing. There are two ways of not displaying layers, turning them off or freezing them. The difference ultimately has to do with the way that autocad calculates objects behind the scenes. If a layer is turned off, which is done by going to the layer dropdown and then clicking on the dot here, let's say for doors, autocad does not display the layer but it is still calculated by autocad behind the scenes. Freezing is a bit more involved as autocad does not display the layer, but it also stops thinking about the layer completely. It's accessible by clicking on the little snowflake icon here. Now when I say that autocad stops thinking about the layer, it means that it no longer calculates any objects on that layer when it does a zoom extents, a reach in or in any of its other functions. If you have a layer that has a lot of complicated objects and your file is getting a bit sluggish, freezing the layer will help autocad process just a little bit faster as opposed to just turning the layer on or off. Another difference is that the current layer can be turned off, meaning you can still create new geometry, but it will not be displayed versus the current layer cannot be frozen. We can see this if I try and turn off my current layer, which is the walls layer. Autocad gives me a warning and says that it will create new objects, but it won't display them if I do this. I'll go ahead and click keep current layer on and now I'll try and freeze that layer. Autocad says that this is not possible and it offers to turn the layer off or cancel. Instead of manually going into each layer in your list and turning it on or off, or freezing or thawing it, we have a few additional options that we can find just above the layer dropdown and those are here. The two I want to focus on right now are lay off and lay freeze. Lay off allows you to simply select an object visibly on your screen and it will use that object's layer and turn it off. Lay freeze does the same thing, allowing you to select an object that's on a specific layer and it will turn that entire layer frozen. There are two complementary tools that are not available as buttons, but they can be typed in in the command line. There are layon, "l-a-y-o-n," and then press return. This turns on all layers that have been turned off. And "l-a-y-t-h-w," for laythaw. This will thaw or unfreeze any layers that are currently frozen. Using these tools, we can help leverage layers to make our work just a little bit easier.

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