Layers and Entities Transparency in DWG Drawings

The 2014 version of ARES Commander Edition, celebrates Graebert’s 30 years of innovation and expertise of CAD. More than just a high-productivity and cost-effective alternative to AutoCAD, Graebert’s CAD technologies are used by nearly 5 million of professionals in more than 100 countries and ARES Commander Edition is the third generation of our CAD software formerly known as FelixCAD and PowerCAD.

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ARES Commander Edition 2014 introduces layer and entity transparency.

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Let’s add transparency to this Cross-Hatch.

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For that, the first option is to go the Layer Manager.

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Search for the layer of this entity

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and change the transparency factor.

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We select this layer

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and enter the transparency factor …

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…here.

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Let’s enter 40%.

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A value of “0” means “0% transparency” or no transparency, that is opaque.

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We define a transparency of 40%.

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To increase the transparency, we could enter a higher factor, like 70, for example.

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We click OK.

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The Cross-Hatch has become transparent and we see some of the white backgrounds behind it.

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If the object does not look transparent, there could be two explanations:

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A problem with the graphics card,

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Or, more likely, you could have disabled any transparency in Options,  the second method.

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The box you see checked here is the one which globally activates or restricts transparency.

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Here is another interesting parameter,

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which determines whether, locked layers may be shown with transparency.

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This can instantly simplify your drawing and make the other layers more visible.

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If defined to zero, there is no transparency.

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Let’s lock the layer of the street pavement.

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ARES tells us this has been successfully locked.

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However, nothing changes visually in the drawing:

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We can’t see any difference between locked layers and other layers.

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So, let’s go back to Options…

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… and we’ll change this to 90% transparency.

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Now, we can see how the locked layer is transparent,

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mixing the color of the entities with the
white color of the background.

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So, we have 2 ways to define transparency:

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We can easily define the transparency of a layer or of a specific entity.

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Or we can globally change
the transparency of all locked layers within Options.

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If we want to make one specific
entity transparent,

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we select it and change its properties.

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So, you can control the transparency of an entity either from the properties palette,

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or by changing the transparency percentage of the layer to which it belongs.

To learn more about ARES Commander, visit our Youtube Channel: GraebertTV