most of the time you’re drawing you won’t have a layer you need or want to use that happens to eliminate this issue I recommend that you start every new drawing with a template file that’ll have most of your common layers already in it that you’re going to use just maintain that template file keep it up to date and when you develop or make new layers make sure you include it in there especially if it’s one you feel that you’re going to use often a regardless of how you started your file you’re still going to need to make a new layer from time to time that process is actually quite simple open up the layer manager type in LA on the command line that’s the easiest way to do it or just leave it open all the time if you have more than one screen which is the way I do my work every day I have multiple screens I keep my layer manager open all the time I never close it that’s how often you’re going to be working in your layer manager if nothing else it helps to make something current I can just scroll through my list double-click and there you go so that one’s current but to make a new layer it’s actually quite simple the easiest ways to start with a layer that has the most objects or settings in common with what you want to do just click on this icon right here to make a new layer or press alt + n we’ll give it a name called layer 1 if you already have a layer 1 it’ll call it layer 2 if you have a layer 2 it’ll call layer 3 etc now you can see that it copied all the settings from my windows layer very simple and that’s great now a lot of your layers are going to have the exact same settings that’s okay you don’t have to change them just do what you need to do that’s done you know having different layers with the exact same settings on it because they are going to be used to organize different types of objects so this is called windows maybe my new layer is called windows dash bay because we’re going to put in some bay windows and we want them on their own layer but we want them to print the same with the same color same continuous line type the same line weight same transparency etc that’s going to happen all the time in fact you’re going to use a lot of the same line weights the colors will typically just be used to help you differentiate visually what the objects are on your screen you can also print directly to those colors but most of the time you’re probably just going to print to the color black and that’s okay too when you create your new layer you can do it however you need to if it’s selected in here and taking over some of these settings or you can just create one and then change everything all that you want it’s very easy to make a new layer and to edit them it’s just as easy so once you’ve created it you can click on the color
change it to green or whatever color you want
change it to a different line type different thickness
okay editing a layer is very easy now you can edit multiple layers at the same time if you hold down the control button you can click on as many layers as you want or if you click on one hold down the shift key and it will pick every layer between the two layers that you selected once they’re all selected you can make the changes to all of them at the same time
and it will apply your change to all of those layers
there you go just pick one layer again and remember or when you’re picking the layers pick them over here in the name or in the status otherwise if I pick over here it’s going to open up my color change and that’s what it’s going to want if you only need to edit the color of one layer then that’s fine click it the color
and there you go that’s a quick way and it reduces or eliminates one step of picking
again
picking picking or I can just go one click
three click so it’s going to take off one or two clicks but that’s all you have to do to create a new layer or to edit a layer
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