Exploring The Layer Manager

Technical drawings are characterized by using LAYERS. It’s easy to organize drawings using layers. In this video, we will learn how to create and configure layers in technical drawings.

For that, we need to click on LAYER MANAGER. Then press NEW. Name the layer. Determine if that layer is going to be visible or not. If it will be blocked. Or assign a color.

We can also determine the line type known in ARES as “line style”. Or you may also load a specific line style. Layers may have a line thickness configured. Note however that, at the time of printing, there is the possibility to use a print style to change these parameters.

In such a way that we can keep the thickness of the drawing, or we can make a new configuration according to the colors.

Layer Options

A layer can be transparent or opaque. On a zero percent opacity, it has full transparency. On a percent, it is fully opaque. Here, it is not showing what color this layer will be printed in.

Until it is configured, it will display the default values, because it will depend on the printing system. But it is something that can be changed at the time of printing.

This icon allows you to set whether or not a layer will be printable. This other icon, allows you to determine in which VIEWPORT of the paper space, the layer will be displayed.

In addition, we can add a description that may, for example, facilitate the work with colleagues. Our layer is created, however, it is not the active layer as we can see here.

Activate Layers

The layer in use is this one. If we want to use another active layer, we must select the layer and click on ACTIVE. Now it is the active layer. That means that from now on, any entity we will draw will be in the new active layer.

Any element that we are going to draw, will be done in the new layer. On the other hand, if we make a copy of an existing object; the copy will be exactly similar to the original object, including the layer to which it belongs.

No matter what layer is active. When selecting the new object copied, we can see that it is on another layer. If we wish, we can draw a new object with another color than the default one of the layer. For it, here, we can indicate a specific color. While, as you can see, we are working on the new layer.

Now, when drawing, the element contains the specific color that we have defined, although it belongs to the new layer. In this way, if we turn off the “new layer”, both objects will disappear since they both belong to the same layer.

Changing Layer Color

Although they have different colors. In short, the colors in a layer serve to distinguish objects, to give a different aesthetic to the drawing, or to later define a printing table where we could assign a specific printing thickness and color for each color on the screen.

Now we return to the LAYER MANAGER, to make a change in the new layer. For example change the assigned color, to “red”. When you click OK, we will see that this object has changed color, but this other one does not. This is because this object is assigned the “BYLAYER” color, for e.g. its color depends on the layer. While this other has a specific and independent color and so does not change when we change the color of the layer.

Assign a Line Thickness to New Layer

In the same way, we can change other elements, for example, the line style. In this case, it affects the elements since both have established the line style by LAYER that is to say that depends on the configuration of the layer. On the other hand, here below, we can activate, line thickness. And now, from the LAYER MANAGER we assign a line thickness to our new layer and as you see, the entity will now stand out from the rest. With the same button, we can deactivate it. In this way, we can have a preview of the aspect of the line thickness in the drawing.

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