Friday, March 15, 2019
AutoCAD Tutorial: Search & Group Layers – Hot to Find and Organize Your Layers Quickly - 2 Minute Tuesday
CAD Intentions: Today I wanted to share the third instalment in the series and I’m really excited about this one, in the Article I explain and walk through how to quickly find any specific layer you might be looking for in your drawing using the Layer search option along with a few tricks to help make it easier for you. This trick can save you a ton of time, especially if you’re someone who has a tendency to have large drawings with a lot of layers, or you frequently get drawings from clients and are not familiar with their layer naming conventions.
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4 comments:
I’ve recently started thinking more about my layer organization since I like to use a lot of layers. I haven’t been using the search feature since I never noticed it, but I have been starting to use folders more recently, and I’ve found it very helpful. Especially if I’m working with the space drawings and elements of the designer’s drawing pulled into mine, I like putting all the space drawing layers into one folder and the designer’s layers into another so I don’t need to go through their layers to get to mine. I think knowing about the search function now I will probably start thinking through my naming structure more to make it more conducive to searching. I don’t spend much time scrolling through looking for layers, but I bet the amount of time I spend adds up. In general there are lots of little tricks I could learn to streamline my drafting process. Then again, what takes time is deciding what to draw, not drawing it, so I don’t know if little shortcuts will really make a big difference in the end.
Oh man, I hope I’m not the only one, but I am really struggling in AutoCAD. I know how to do this basics, but the whole efficiency thing hasn’t come into existence for me yet. This tutorial is super helpful for quick tips and tricks. I’m definitely going to check out their other tutorials to help with the mastery exam. I really like how short the tutorial is. I find it hard to pay attention to long videos with excessive talking. Quick walkthroughs are ideal when you just need a little help with one aspect of a process instead of the whole thing. I would love to see a step by step tutorial instead of just a video that I could go back and review. I think it would be really cool of we had a cheat sheet for AutoCAD like we do for hand drafting but with screenshots and walkthroughs. Maybe that’s something our class could start and other classes add to every year.
Layers function is the most hard one for me to utilize so far, but since it is almost fundamental one and every other functions about managing a drawing is build around it, I have set a goal to make myself paying more attention to it. However during the process of being strict about the layers, I met a major issue that we import our drawings from so many different resources, and they barely share a consistent rule of naming and managing layers. From this point, I found it is only possible for me to make my own rule on the layers I assigned and drawn, and try to combine as many existing layers into the known category as possible to make the layer list neat and and functioning. For the specific situation PTM is working, I believe it makes sense that we communicate as much as needed on separate drawings rather than trying to build a common rule, since we are all still learning and establishing our habits of working with layers.287
While working with CAD software isn't new for me, AutoCAD, specifically, is new to me. While drafting in Vectorworks and Solidworks, layers were never something I've thought too much about. I always have just created layers every time I changed what overall part of the draft I was working on. For example, in drawing a wall, I may have on layer for the base structure of the wall, one for hatching, one for doors and windows, and one for trim. I was always creating layers just for me. While that may be the most important thing to keep in mind while drafting, you also have to think about how someone else will interpret your drafting. Making the layers easy to comprehend and easy to understand what's on them, will make it easy for someone else to surf through your drawing. I think this is something I will pay a lot more attention to in future draftings.
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