Layers and classes

[trunnel]

I am having a terrible time understanding the philosophy using classes and layers. I understand the descriptions in the manual, can not figure out how to use these things together. The description in "Architecture" is some help, but not enough. I am an inventor and want to us VW to do product design. I do not want to know what classes and layers are, I want to know how to use them the way they are meant to be used. I don't know what the classes really do for you.

------------------

[Guest]

Classes can help you organize your drawing and control the drawing attributes of the objects you draw.

Often, the objects you draw will fall into categories, with objects in each category using the same line weight, line color, fill color, patterns, and texture. If you set up a class for each of these categories, you won't have to adjust all those drawing attributes individually: you can just change the active class before drawing an object, and those attributes can be set up for you automatically. (Check the 'Use at creation' box when you set up the class attributes to make the happen.) This technique is very effective if you use RenderWorks, because you can assign a texture to each class. If you're designing, say, a telehpone, you can put all the exterior parts in the same class, and give the class an appropriate texture. When you render, that texture will be used for all the objects in that class. If you then want to try a different appearance for the telephone, you only have to change the texture associated with the class rather than changing each part individually.

Classes are often used to control the visibility of objects as well. You might, for example, want to present the same drawing or set of drawings to several groups of people, and have different notes on the drawing for each audience. Create one class for each audience, and put all the notes for an audience in the corresponding class. You can then easily turn on or off the notes for a given audience. You could also do this by putting all the notes for each audience on a different layer, of course, but it's often much more convenient to put the notes relating to a given object on the same layer as that object, and not on some other layer.

Hope that helps.

[trunnel]

Thanks Caleb. Your reply really helps. Some how the idea of controlling the visibility in "layers" was never clear how I could use it to my benefit. It seemed to be nothing another name for layers. It is much clearer now. Thank you!

------------------