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Should Viewports have an Active Layer or Primary/Secondary Layers?


Matt Overton

Question

In traditional drafting each sheet we always knew what was the content that sheet was responsible for generating what was there purely for context/reference.

Yes the onus was on the staff to keep the reference up to date and is something that the computer has been very good at streamlining.

Still for all the benefit It allows it strikes me almost everyday that CAD/BIM has never managed to nail an organization structure as simple, effective and teachable as of manual drafting and that causes a fair bit of busy-work we do for the system not for the project/client. Although Saved Views does this so they to are more effective in this regards but create two things that must be managed.

 

I think many roadblocks and visibility control issues could go away if Vectorworks and Viewports understood this same concept and had different grades of layers in the viewport.

 

To me this would look like :-

- Viewports have a distinction between active "content" and secondary "context" layers.

Personally and for our office system I'd only want one active but I can see how people would want more.

 

- Double clicking a Viewport to navigate to design space would favour active layers, maybe making context layers grey in appearance.

- If there is only one active layer this navigation could happen without user input.

- If say you're in "return to Viewport" mode command-arrows could jump between active layers not all layers.

 

- In project sharing if no one else has command of the layer the system could check out the active layer(s) on my behalf without user input.

understanding this couldn't happen now as the system would check-out far to much and cause more hassle than it solves.

 

- For viewports with crops or view limitations the system would further refine that to only checking out the visible objects.

 

All these would streamline workflow by giving the system the information it needs to get us working faster and fluidly. Yet wouldn't stop us jumping out of this context to fix part of the project another drawing is responsible for but this shift would be a clear choice on the user.

 

Further it would hopefully allow:-

- Class Visibility that could be controlled to be only visible for content layers or generally visible as they are now.

Allowing for dimensions and notes to be done in context without complex class structures.

 

- for crops to be applied to just the context layers.

Which combined with above would do away with annotation space which has allows felt divorced from the project.

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