AutoCAD: Tips & Tricks

- Welcome to another AutoCAD tip and trick. We're going to be looking now at freezing layers in your current viewport. Now this is a really nice feature of AutoCAD because what it allows you to do, is just freeze the layer in the viewport, not freeze the layer completely. So we've got a new drawing for you, it's called Freezing Layers.dwg. You can download it from the library to follow along with this particular tips and tricks video. So before we go anywhere with this particular drawing, let's jump into the Model tab. So there's the Model tab. I'm going to zoom in on the plan, the layout view here. So you can see we've got some lines here. Now these are actually Polylines, and there's Property Boundary 9 is the layer there. And we've also got one here, we've got Property Boundary 8 as well. Now what we can do is we can freeze these layers. Now if I jump into the Layers panel in the Home tab on the Ribbon and jump in here like so, you can see there's Property Boundary 8 and there's Property Boundary 9 like so. Now the thing is, with this, is if I freeze them here like so, you'll see they disappear in the Model space like that. So I'll just hit escape there to lose the Layer dropdown menu. If I jump back into the Layout tab, you'll see that they are also frozen here in the viewport. Now it might be that I don't want to see them in the viewport but I do want to see them in the Model. So I jump back into the Layer dropdown and what I'll do is I'll thaw them out again so they're thawed out like that. And as you can see they've come back there and if I jump back into the Layout tab, you can see they're back there as well. Now the benefit I've got if I do this in the viewport only is it means that they are still available in the Model if I need to do any editing. So I'm going to jump into the viewport now. Let's just double click in the viewport and make it active. So you can see there when I hover over that one there's Property Boundary 9, and if I hover over that one, Property Boundary 8. Now what I can do here is I can jump into the Layer dropdown again. And what I can do this time is use this little icon here, Freeze or thaw in current viewport. So if I select that there you'll see they disappear in the current viewport like so. I might also want to lose some proposed drainage and existing drainage as well. So if I have a look here in and come to Drainage, there's Drainage EXISTING, Drainage PROPOSED. So I'll freeze those as well like so but I'm only freezing them in the viewport. So I'll click outside the viewport now, lose the menu, the menu for the Layer dropdown, and double click again outside, and you can see now that I've deactivated that viewport. Now you can see that we've lost those boundaries and we've lost the drainage, but if I come back into the Model tab now, they're still there. So I can edit information if I want to, quick and easy, edit the information if I need to, and if I want them to come back in the viewport, I simply go back into the Layout tab, make the viewport active again, and go to the dropdown here, and you can see the ones that are frozen in the current viewport. They've got that little snowflake there next to the little sort of square shape. So if I thaw these out again, you can see them coming back in the viewport there, there's the Drainage EXISTING, Drainage PROPOSED, that all comes back as well. So I'll just hit escape to lose the Layer dropdown, double click outside the viewport, it's all back in the viewport but it's all still available to me in the Model space as well. It's a really nice feature in AutoCAD especially if you've got really busy viewports and you want to take a bit of the detail away for clarity but you want to maintain that information in the Model space for editing in your AutoCAD drawings.