Layers and sub layers

[Clas-H]

Hi people,

Is there a way to create sublayers in VW?

Is there a way to organise the layers in alphabetical order or do I have to do it manualy?

Greatful for any answer on this.

[Guest]

Layers can be organized alphabetically, but it may not be practical. In addition to object stacking, layers also determine the stack of objects. The layer listed first is at the top of the stacking order and the layer listed last is at the bottom of the stacking order.

It's likely you'll want your layers to be listed as such.

You cannot create sublayers as there is no need to. You can however, create subclasses.

Out of curiosity, are you coming from an AutoCAD background?

[islandmon]

1) The need for sublayers is supplanted by Layer Linking.

2) Each Layer has it's own ID# whereas the LayerNameString is

provided by the User and can be anything Unicode supports.

Manually organizing Layers is by far the best approach compared with VW making arbitrary decisions to resort them based on alphabetical logic. Keeping in mind that Layer functionality like snapping and overlay is stack dependent.

By the way VW Layers & Linking technology is superb.

[Clas-H]

Ive been working some on autocad but abandoned the windows platform some years back.

Layer stacking order is not important to me. (being a watchmaker, not an arcitect) its more important to quickly find a layer and when my current project counts approximately 120 layers it can be hard.

I wanted to use the sub layers to store the 2D and the locus-cloud for a 3D part. (these are nice to have when doing annotation and exporting dxf etc.) I guess I should make up some classes for this but dont want to change in the middle of a project.

[Clas-H]

I decided to create different classes to manage 2D and 3D. I added two new classes "2D" and "Locus" then I renamed the "none" class that I used for everything before to "3D". When I hit the OK button VW freezes and I have to force-quit. ?

Islandmoon I like the layerlinking feature to. I use it to make different assemblys of parts. Great for presentations and assembly drawings.

[alanmac]

Don't rename the none class, even if you can, it's not wise in my opinion.

I have it as my default class then as I create an object I give it a class.

It's also my way of ensuring I have given everything their own class.

Set visibility in the "organise" menu under the "class option" to "active only" then see what's left. Anything visible I know has the none class and as such needs a class given to it (so it works correctly with my render program)

Once I see what I need to class I swith the visibility back to the "show/edit all layers/objects" setting.

Why are you using so many layers Clas-H ? 120 layers is a lot of layers, and sounds like something from Autocad which has layers not classes as well, I believe.

I tend to create with very fewer layers and lots of classes.

Wow, watchmaking. Great to hear it's still happening in the days of electronic, we don't wind it up, just buy a new battery or chuck it away and get a new one, world we live in now.

Alan

[ 08-17-2005, 10:37 AM: Message edited by: alanmac ]

[Clas-H]

Im using a layer per part and a mechanical watch have loads of parts.

This is the first big project on vectorworks and for the next project i'll change the way I do things slightly. Nothing in the file comes from autocad.

[alanmac]

Clas-H

I was refering to the methodology rather than the drawing coming from Autocad. Maybe somebody from NNA would care to comment but I'd have thought you should use classes rather than layers as you have been doing.

In classes you can use up to three( I believe) sub levels so you'll never run out of descriptive class names to give your parts.

For example Main, Main-front, Main-front-face, Main-front-case, Main-front-assembly, Main-rear- assembly, and so on.

It's really a question of you creating the classes which suit how you want to describe and organise your drawings.

It's then possible to group your objects by class and using visibilty see the "grouped" objects even if they had not been grouped in the normal way. Even across layers

So the part has a name given by you , which if you make it a symbol will be listed in your worksheet, again this can be any name which helps describe the part.

So a gear wheel could be called "Small front gear wheel" as a named symbol, but be part of the Main-front-timer assembly, so its class would be that.

Custom visibilty will show all the parts of that group "Main-front-timer" (Class) irrespective of their part name, which are symbols, and your worksheet will list all the parts because you've used the symbol listing option.

The other thing about a symbol is it won't let you give an object the same symbol name. You can of course have multi symbols in your drawing, such as Brass screw 10 symbol, but that object will be the same one for each. You can however assign any class to any object/symbol.

By the way these classes will appear in alfabetical order in not only your drop down menu list under classes but in your OIP under the class section so it would be easy to change an objects/symbols class if that helps at all.

With this combination of layers and classes, as I'm sure you are aware, you can create almost infinite variations of visibilty to show the parts you want to in different drawings.

I have to admit I struggle at times to decide how best to plan this out, but only because of the great flexibility and potential VW offers from using these combinations of Classes, Symbols, Layers, and Visibilities.

Somebody who uses 11.5 more than me will no doubt say that with Viewports that potential increases even more so.

Apologises if you already know all this and I'm preaching to the converted.

All the best

Alan

[ 08-17-2005, 02:23 PM: Message edited by: alanmac ]

[Clas-H]

Well it seems I have to get autocad and the way I work with layers out of my head.

Thanks for the very good advice, Katie, Islandmon and Alanmac (no need to apologise).

Cheers