So in the core chapters, in the core Skills module, we did look at layers and the importance of layers,
how they allow you to turn things on and off, set colors, line types, that kind of thing.
And it's important that you use those just to make your life easier.
But also if you go into a company, they will expect things to be on a certain layer in terms of their
CAD standards.
So we're going to look at that now.
We're going to add some layers into this drawing and then put individual objects on the correct layer.
So the first thing we're going to do under this home menu, we're going to go to layer properties and
we're going to bring up the layer box and we're going to create our layers in here.
So to create a new layer is this this symbol on the left.
I'm going to click that and I'm going to call this first layer external walls.
Now, when you're typing in a name in layers, don't try not to use spaces and things.
I'm not even sure it will let you.
The way most people do it is to with capitalization.
So capital letter at the start of each new word without a space.
So capital Y, capital W external walls.
Okay, I'm going to press return and then I'm going to press return again, which will add a new layer.
Internal walls enter, enter windows, enter, enter doors and enter lighting.
Okay.
And.
I'm going to add another one.
I'm going to call it Hatch because we'll be adding some hatch and another one will be text and another
one dimensions.
Okay.
And that will do for now.
So we've added all those.
We can close this down and we can look at putting these onto a layer.
So we're going to go around and we're going to select objects and we're going to put them onto layers
until everything is accounted for.
We don't want anything on layer zero.
Layer zero is the one that comes in when you.
It's the only layer that exists in a new drawing.
Really?
We don't want anything on that.
We want everything to have a layer associated with it.
Now, a good way I use of making sure you've selected everything is to shift select all your layers
apart from layer zero and turn them off.
Okay.
And close that.
So now all only things on layer zero will show and we can see, we can see all our drawing because it's
on layer zero.
But as we add, as we assign it to layers, it should disappear.
So let's try that out.
If I click on a light, for instance, and what I can do, I can right click select similar and it will
select all those same blocks because they're all the same block.
I'm going to pull this down and I'm going to put them on a lighting layer and it will say, We'll get
a warning.
One of my objects has been moved.
It's just giving you a warning.
If you didn't, if that layer had just been turned off by someone else, you didn't turn it off yourself.
You would think, oh, I've accidentally deleted my objects.
No, we're just on a turned off layer.
Okay.
I'm going to do the same for Windows.
I'm going to go to select similar and put those on windows again.
Doors.
Select similar and I'm going to make sure I select this one as well, which isn't a block.
So I'm going to select those four objects and I'm going to put that onto the doors layer.
Okay?
And now I can just select all those, put it on internal walls.
I think there's a bit there.
And so the walls keep getting this come out, this warning, and then external walls.
There we go.
Everything's gone.
So now everything is assigned to a layer.
I can go back to layer properties, shift select them, turn it all on.
And it's back.
Now I want to set some colors to these objects, and I'm going to do that through the layers.
So first thing I need to do is select all and make sure that the color for all the objects is set to
bi layer.
If you don't know what that means, you may need to rewatch the properties and the layers modules in
the core modules, but you should pick it up just by watching this example because these are set to
bi layer.
That means the color of each object is set by the layer color.
So if we go to the layer manager, for instance doors, I'm going to make the door layer blue.
Okay, so the doors layer is set to blue.
Now all our doors have gone blue because they're all set to color by the layer or by layer.
Same again.
We can do that in Windows.
I'm going to make these green.
Doesn't matter which shade of green.
It doesn't even have to be green.
You can choose whatever color you want.
Lighting.
I'm going to make orange.
Okay.
Um.
That will do for now.
So we've got a bit of color in our drawing and it's easy to see.
It's a lot easier to kind of differentiate between the objects.
Now, one thing I will say.
If we just copy one of these lights out, you can see this block.
It's taken its its color.
Okay?
Its applied the color across the whole block.
Now, if I double click a block, if you double click a block, it will come up with this edit block
definition and you can select your block and it kind of takes you into an edit block space.
So it's like a mini join space just for editing that block and it will allow you to make changes to
your block.
So let's say I put this the individual lines inside the block were on the let's say they were on the
windows layer.
Okay.
I'm going to close and it will ask us to save if we save these changes.
There you go.
Now.
Because any change you make to one block will affect all the objects.
So all these lights are now green because the lines inside were put on the windows layer.
And that's overriding the block layer.
So the objects inside are overriding it.
We can solve that easy enough.
We can go in and we can put these objects onto the correct layer.
Okay, close that save.
Okay, we'll close that save, and now it saves.
All those blocks.
So I just wanted to show you that if ever you were using a block and you change its color just by clicking
it and it's not updating, it's because the something inside the block is overriding it.
Okay.
And that goes for line types as well.
Any kind of properties like that.
So now we've got our object on the correct layers.
In the next chapter, we'll look at just filling in these walls with a bit of hatch to making it look
better.