Get AutoCAD to Set Your Current Layer for You

Let’s face it, we are constantly changing our current layer while drawing. What if we could get AutoCAD to change our current layer for us?

Join Lynn Allen as she shows you how you can get AutoCAD to do some of the work for you – saving you some valuable drawing time!

Video Transcript

Hello there, this is Lynn Allen. Thank you for joining me for another AutoCAD tip, courtesy of Cadalyst magazine. I hope everybody is being nice to you this week. I'm going to be nice to you. I'm going to share with you a couple of tips that allow you to very quickly change your current layer, and in some cases, have AutoCAD change it for you.

Let's face it, we spend so much time changing from one current layer to another, and you know how I don't like having to do any extra picks or clicks, right? Let's make your life a little bit easier when it comes to layer.

First off, a few releases ago, AutoCAD added in this great option for hatching so that you can set a default layer for all of your hatching. It just automatically lands on that layer. All you have to do is go into the Hatch command. You have to be using the Ribbon. Hope you are using the Ribbon. There's kind of a top secret option underneath Properties that allows you to simply set it to Hatch Layer Override, so when you do hatching, it places your hatching on that layer. Then when you are all done hatching, it will put your current layer back to what it was before. It's awesome.

I'm going to go ahead and select Hatch, because well that seems like a logical layer to put your hatching on. From that point forward, I don't have to worry about setting my current layer for hatching. Love that, right? So there's one.

If you are in AutoCAD 2016, go to the Annotate tab, and you will see that they also added in an option for dimensions. You will see that there's a dropdown list so that I can set a default layer for my dimensions. Once again, when I do need dimensions, it will set that layer to be current. Then when I'm done, it puts the current layer back to what it was before. Now there is a trick though. There's always a catch, right? You have to use the new Dimensioning tool, which is so awesome, I don't know why you wouldn't. But it only works when you are using the new Dimensioning tool.

I wish I could tell you that there's also great option for text or blocks or whatever the situation is that you happen to be doing. For me, I find the fastest way, since we don't have those types of setups, if I want to make sure my text lands on the right layer, I want to drop the list down (once again, I'm lazy). There is a very cool option that I have talked about before that allows you to set your current layer based on objects. Very, very simple.

I'm going to click the LayMCur tool (I don't know how you say that -- click that tool right there on the screen), and then I'll go ahead and select, in this case, some text. It will make sure, you can see up here, it changed my current layer to that particular layer. Now it leaves it at that layer, so I can automatically put it back when you are done, I'm assuming, adding some more text to your drawing file. That's a super speedy way to also set your current layer.

Hopefully those three tips will come in handy, save you some time, give you some extra time to do more fun things in life like watch football. Hope everything is going well for you, and I'll see you back here in two more weeks. Thank you so much for joining me.

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