Finding the Layers You Want

Finding the Layers You Want
With only a handful of layers, it’s fairly easy to find the layer you want to turn off. It becomes much
more difficult, however, when the number of layers exceeds 20 or 30. The Layer Properties Manager
dialog box offers some useful tools to help you quickly find the layers you want.
Suppose you have several layers whose names begin with C, such as C-lights, C-header, and
C-pattern, and you want find those layers quickly. You can click the Name button at the top of the
layer list to sort the layer names in alphabetic order. (You can click the Name button again to
reverse the order.) To select those layers for processing, click the first layer name that starts with C;
then, scroll down the list until you find the last layer of the group, and Shift+click it. All the layers
between those layers are selected. If you want to deselect some of those layers, hold down the Ctrl
key while clicking the layer names you don’t want to include in your selection. Or, Ctrl+click other
layer names you do want selected.
The Color and Linetype buttons at the top of the list let you control which layers appear in the
list by virtue of their color or linetype assignments. Other buttons sort the list by virtue of status:
On/Off, Freeze/Thaw, Lock/Unlock, and so forth. (See the “Other Layer Options” sidebar later in
this chapter.)
Now, try changing the layer settings again by turning off all the layers except Wall and Ceiling,
leaving just a simple rectangle. In this exercise, you’ll get a chance to experiment with the On/Off
options of the Layer Properties Manager dialog box:
1. Click the Layer Properties Manager button in the Layers control panel, or choose
Format  Layer.
2. Click the top layer name in the list box; then, Shift+click the last layer name. All the layer
names are highlighted.
TIP Another way to select all the layers at once in the Layer Properties Manager dialog box is to
right-click the layer list and then choose the Select All option from the shortcut menu. If you want
to clear your selections, right-click the layer list, and choose Clear All.
3. Ctrl+click the Wall and Ceiling layers to deselect them and thus exempt them from your
next action.
4. Click the lightbulb icon of any of the highlighted layers.
5. A message appears, warning you that the current layer will be turned off. Click No in the message
box. The lightbulb icons turn gray to show that the selected layers have been turned off.
6. Click OK. The drawing now appears with only the Wall and Ceiling layers displayed. It
looks like a simple rectangle of the room outline.
7. Open the Layer Properties Manager dialog box again, select all the layers as you did in step 2,
and then click any of the gray lightbulbs to turn on all the layers at once.
8. Click OK to return to the drawing.
5 KEEPING TRACK OF LAYERS AND BLOCKS
In this exercise, you turned off a set of layers with a single click on a lightbulb icon. You can
freeze/thaw, lock/unlock, or change the color of a group of layers in a similar manner by clicking
the appropriate layer property. For example, clicking a color swatch of one of the selected layers
opens the Select Color dialog box, in which you can set the color for all the selected layers.