Express Tools – Layers

As well as the Layer Properties Manager, you could find more powerful tools, through which you get a full-featured kits for layer management. These tools are very convenient to use, and we are going to briefly present some of the useful functions here.
Layer Manager
  

With Layer Manager, you can edit layer properties of your current drawings and save it. Several layer configurations can be set and stored for the same drawing. So you can have various sets of layer configurations in a single drawing and restore to any status you desired as long as you have saved those states. Layer states can also be exported to or imported from a LAY file.

Layer Match
To change configurations of one or more layers, you can either use the Layer Properties Manager or the command LAYMCH. When you are going to use a certain layer as a template which you would like some other layers to be, then the Layer Match function could be very helpful and efficient.

Change to Current Layer
You can use this command to change the layer of one or more objects to the current layer.

Layer Isolate
The command LAYISO will help to isolate the layer(s) of one or more selected objects by turning other layers off.

Copy Objects to New Layer
By using this command, selected objects can be copied to a different layer, leaving original objects not modified.


To specify the destination layer, you can either select an existing layer from the list or type a new layer name in the text box. If you enter a new layer name, a prompt will appear to ask you whether to create a new layer. The new layer created here will inherit the properties of the first selected entity to be copied.

Tips: You can use COPYTOLAYER to achieve the effect that the same objects would appear to be different in different viewports. Here is how to make it.
  1. In the new viewport, use COPYTOLAYER to copy the objects you want to a new layer.
  2. Use LAYISO to isolate the original layer in the original viewport and the new layer in the new viewport respectively.
  3. You can now change the color and/or line type of the new layer, adjusting its appearance as you want. Since you are just copying the objects, you need to repeat the COPYTOLAYER command anytime the objects in the original layer are modified.
The above are only some of the useful tools for layer management, and there are much more for you to try. Actually you can achieve these functions by manipulating the standard Layer Properties Manager, but the express tools provided definitely can help you facilitate your design jobs.