So we've looked at setting current layers and we've looked at layer names.
Let's look at a few more of these options that we've got in here now.
So.
We've seen how we can turn things on and off.
And we added some furniture and we turned those on and off.
And we know we could, for instance, turn our internal walls off by selecting this.
Okay, maybe we want to turn our hatching off like that.
Okay.
But we also have this column here, which is it's actually called Freeze.
I'm the opposite to that is for.
So this is one of those things a lot of people don't understand the difference between turning something
on and off and freezing it and firing it.
Okay.
So.
At first.
Look, if I was to freeze the hatch layer, it disappears.
Okay, So it looks like it's done exactly the same as turning it off.
But there is two fundamental differences here.
And I'll show you those now.
There is a selection tool that is not used very much in AutoCAD, and that is just to type in all.
And it basically means everything.
If I was to say if I was to select delete, okay, and I type in a double L or all that's going to select
everything and if I right click that, it's deleted everything.
So let me undo that quickly.
So that's delete all basically.
And you can use that.
You can move all okay and you can move it.
But if you type in all that will that will select everything.
Now if I turn off the hatch layer, okay, and I go delete all and delete it, it's gone.
If I then turn on the hatch layer, nothing comes on because even though.
That was turned off when I chose to delete all it, still selected it.
If I freeze that layer, okay.
And I go delete all okay and it's gone and then I for it or unfreeze it, it comes back.
So that is a the main difference.
Um, when you turn things off, it is just a display thing.
You just turn it off the visibility of them, if you like.
They are still there and they will still be selected by a lot of commands.
When you freeze them, it removes them from the drawing.
They can still be reloaded just by unfreezing it or firing it, whichever you want to say.
But, um.
The.
Really they removed from the drawing and they won't be selected by any future commands until they're
unfrozen.
Also, that process of removing them, it means they're not using resources.
So if you have something that's quite detailed, got lots of detail and it's really slowing your drawing
down and making it hard to load, you can freeze that object and the layers of objects on.
Okay.
And it will it will it won't load it in.
You'll see your drawing suddenly becomes a lot faster because it's it's freezing it out so it can be
used to temporarily just stop loading some info while you do some work on your drawing and then you
can load it back in again.
It's like removing the object from the drawing with an option to bring it back in.
So if you don't want if you rather than delete something that you might need later, you can consider
just creating a layer.
Sometimes I create a layer in a drawing and I call it temp delete or something like that, and I just
fire it and anything I want rid of that I might one day need again, I put on that layer and it just
helps you out there.
So you're not you have I hate deleting things and you might end up the same way.
You never really want to delete something in case you need it again.
Maybe it's because I'm a bit of a hoarder, I don't know.
But just freezing it makes that kind of.
More user friendly, if you like.
The next column is Lock.
So anything if I let's go with the doors.
If I lock that layer and I select objects.
Okay.
If I was to delete now you'll see the doors weren't deleted.
I can't do anything with that because it's on a locked layer, so it won't let me do anything with that
layer while it's locked.
That's good.
When you've got a busy drawing and you keep selecting things by accident, maybe you keep moving them
or deleting them by accident.
You can lock layers and it stops you selecting them color.
Pretty self-explanatory.
As long as things are set to be to have their color set by layer, then whatever color is in here,
that's the color they will take on.
Okay.
And you have all these different ways of choosing colors.
Depending how you want to go about it.
Line type.
Yeah.
So in the lesson about line types, you'll learn all about them.
You can set them by the layer system.
Okay.
In this layer manager Same with the line weights, transparency.
How transparent.
You can always can be set by the layer so you don't have to do it on lines.
Individually, you could set all your doors to be fairly transparent.
This hatching for instance.
So you could you might set that to be 30% transparent.
So it's a bit more faded and you can see objects inside the wall.
This column here, print, maybe you don't want certain things to print.
You could put notes on your drawing.
For instance, this wall set to be demolished.
I don't know.
These lights not working, that kind of thing.
And that would come up in your drawing, But it wouldn't print.
You might not want it to print for whatever reason.
If you didn't want something to print, you can just select its layer.
And now when you print this drawing, the hatch in this case wouldn't print.
Okay.
Now.
Viewport freezes.
I'm going to I'm not going to look at those at the moment.
That's this layer chapter is going to be quite early on because it's such a fundamental thing to know
about layers.
But if I start telling you about things like viewport freezes, you're really not going to know what
I'm talking about because you won't have done the chapters on paper space and model space.
Yet we will be doing a lot of viewport freezing in the actual example chapters when we get on to them.
So just ignore that column for now.
But these are the main settings you will do.
You can have things not print transparent.
The main action I do is freezing and turning things on and off in this layer.
Manager Okay.
So that's a basic overview of what layers are, how to create them and how to generally work with them
in terms of color and line type and turning them on and off.
You'll get to use them in the individual courses and you'll get to use it.
Things like you'll get to look at things like layer control with Viewports later on.
But that is a basic overview but can sound a bit complicated.
I appreciate that, especially when you're not used to actually using them in practice.
But believe me, when someone gives you a complex drawing and asks you to edit just one particular item,
having the ability to just turn all the other items off and just work with that.
So maybe you needed to edit all the windows.
You can just turn everything off and it allows it's much easier.
You're not selecting lots of different things by accident, especially in a busy drawing.
That's when you'll appreciate layers.
Okay, so that's an overview of the layer system in AutoCAD.