From the course: AutoCAD: Developing CAD Standards

Using layer standards in AutoCAD - AutoCAD for Mac Tutorial

From the course: AutoCAD: Developing CAD Standards

Start my 1-month free trial Buy for my team

Using layer standards in AutoCAD

“

- [Instructor] We're starting a new chapter now in our AutoCAD: Developing CAD Standards course. And you can see we've got a new drawing for this particular chapter as well. It's 02_VariousStandards.dwg. Now, you might think that that's a bit of a weird name for a drawing. It is, but what it does is it ties up with what we're going to look at in this chapter, which is the various standards that you already have in place in AutoCAD. Now, when I say various standards, I mean things like layers, dimension styles, text styles, and so on. So, let's have a look at our layer standards first. Jump into the Home tab on the ribbon, and we're going to go to our Layers panel here. Now, you might think, "Okay, I've got a drawing. "I've got layers in it." You might not think that that is a standard in your AutoCAD drawing, but it is. You are standardizing what each object goes on, what each layer the object is on. So for example, if I hover over a wall here, can you see that it's on a line, but the layer is I-WALL? So that standard is now telling me that it's an internal wall. If I hover over, say, a dimension, you can see there A-ANNO-DIMS is the layer. So, you're already standardizing your CAD drawing. Your AutoCAD drawing is becoming standardized because you're giving it layer names. If it wasn't standardized, everything would be on the default Layer 0, for example. So, let's go back to our layers again, the Layers panel here. If I just click on the Layer dropdown, there's all my layers. Now, all different objects in your AutoCAD drawing are on all different layers, and the whole idea of this is you're standardizing. You're making sure that everything goes on a particular layer. So for example, I-WALL is there. Now, the benefit you have is you know that all of your internal walls are on that I-WALL layer. Now, what I can do here is I can isolate everything on the I-WALL layer, which means it's standardized. So, if hit Escape to lose the dropdown menu, you'll notice up here in the Layer panel, you've got various commands available to you. So if I go here, I can isolate, which hides all locks, all layers except those of the selected objects. So, if I click on isolate now, because I've standardized using my layer names, if I click on an internal wall, let's say that one there, like that and press Enter, can you see how everything grays out apart from everything on the I-WALLS layer? So, I've isolated everything so I can see only the objects on the I-WALLS layer, and that's what I mean by utilizing your layer standards in your AutoCAD drawing. Now, if I want to unisolate those, is simply go up to this icon here, Unisolate, and everything's back to normal. But as you can see, those layer properties are already part of the various standards you have in your AutoCAD drawings.

Contents