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Hi, my name is Allen and I'm on the AutoCAD Freestyle team here at Autodesk. Let's take
a look at how you use Layers to organize the objects in your drawings.
Notice when you start a new drawing, it already has a layer called Layer 1. As you create
new objects, sublayers under Layer 1 are created automatically depending what you're drawing.
Here I'll draw a simple garage floor plan. As I draw the lines for the walls a Lines
and Shapes sublayer is created automatically. If I drag a truck from the symbols library,
I'll see the Content sublayer. This works the same for Text, Dimensions,
and Fills. Do you see the light bulb and the selection
icons? Good. Using these is how you control what you see in your drawing. Clicking the
light bulb hides or shows all the objects on that layer. Clicking the selection icon
selects all the objects on that layer. This works the same for top level layers as well
as sublayers. Right now, I'm going to click in my drawing
to clear the selection. Now, I'll open a more complex drawing to show
you some more layer options. The objects in this drawing are in two layers
— the Hardscape layer and the Planting and Furnishings layer.
Let's say I want to separate the Planting and Furnishings layer into two layers. The
first thing I need to do is to create a new layer. To do this I will click the Plus sign
and a new layer is created. Now I change the name of the layer from Layer
1 to Furnishings. I double-click the layer name and type Furnishings. And I also rename
the Planting and Furnishings layer to just Planting.
You can only rename top level layers, not the sublayers that Freestyle creates for you
automatically. Notice the triangle arrow next to the layer
name. This allows you to collapse layers you're not using. This is very helpful if you're
working on a complex drawing with many layers. The quickest way to move objects to a different
layer is to select the objects, In this case the table, then right-click, and choose Send
To Layer and select a layer name. You can also select objects in the drawing and select
move to layer to move all the selected objects to that layer.
Now I can easily hide or show just the table by clicking the light bulb in the Furnishings
layer. Finally, the pencil icon lets me access options
to rename, copy, or delete layers. As you can see, the AutoCAD Freestyle layer
functionality gives you plenty of control over how you want to display and organize
the objects in your drawing.