Properties and Layers

Properties define how an object in Carlson Software is stored. One of the most common properties is the Layer. Layers can be turned off or frozen so the objects on that layer are hidden from the view of the drawing. Layers that are turned off can still be selected while frozen layers are essentially removed from the working set of the drawing. After layers are turned off or on, a redraw (which is done automatically) will update the view. A redraw of a file is a rather quick process. After a frozen layer is thawed, a regeneration may be required to update the view. Regenerations on large files may take a considerable amount of time depending on your hardware.

Layer Dialog Box

The Layer dialog box provides control of the drawing layers. You can turn layers on, off, freeze or thaw them, change the layer color and linetype, set the current layer, add new layers, delete layers, etc. To perform any of these functions, click on the Layers button .

In the Layer dialog box, you can highlight several individual layers to perform actions on at once by holding down the Control key and clicking on the desired layers. You can also highlight a continuous range of layers by highlighting one layer, holding down the Shift key, and clicking on another layer. All layers between the two will be selected. To select all of the layers, hold down the CTRL key and press A on the keyboard.

Layer Drop List

To turn layers on/off or freeze/thaw, you can also use the drop list on the toolbars. When you click on the symbols in the list, the layer’s status will be changed appropriately.

Setting Current Layer

The current layer will be the one shown in the Layer drop list box. You can change the current layer by selecting the desired current layer from the drop list. You can also use the Set Current Layer button and select an object on the layer. The layer the object is on will become the current layer. Finally, you can highlight a layer in the Layer dialog box and click on the Current button to make the highlighted layer current.

You cannot freeze the current layer, but you can turn that layer off (not recommended).

Changing Properties

To change the properties of an object in the drawing, use the Properties button on the toolbar or the Change command from the command line. This command will allow you to change the layer an object is on, the color or linetype of the object. The color and linetype can be set to bylayer or to a specific setting. Bylayer means that when the property for a layer is changed, so does the property for the object. For example, the specific setting of an object may be the color blue. No matter what color you set for the layer the object is on, that object will be blue.