Automatic Viewport Layer Control

[MARPOW]

At a previous company using AutoCAD 2002 we had a system that automatically set layers within viewport based on the layer name and scale of the viewport. We placed everything in a single drawing and the system automatically displayed the correct layers for plotting. The layers had to be consistently named.

My new company relies on manually freezing of layers within viewports with visretain holding those settings. If new layers are created or layer renamed then we must go to all the affected plotting drawings and freeze as required.

The Layer Manager system does not work well either.

Any suggestions?

[Opie]

At a previous company using AutoCAD 2002 we had a system that automatically set layers within viewport based on the layer name and scale of the viewport. We placed everything in a single drawing and the system automatically displayed the correct layers for plotting. The layers had to be consistently named.

My new company relies on manually freezing of layers within viewports with visretain holding those settings. If new layers are created or layer renamed then we must go to all the affected plotting drawings and freeze as required.

The Layer Manager system does not work well either.

Any suggestions?
Contact your previous company for insight on how they have it setup.

[tedg]

Contact your previous company for insight on how they have it setup.
My guess is they must have had a master template drawing for all the layers and all the necessary sheet layouts with the layer states already set in the viewports.

Just a guess though...

[Opie]

My guess is they must have had a master template drawing for all the layers and all the necessary sheet layouts with the layer states already set in the viewports.

Just a guess though...
And they would need to make sure the reference names of all the XREFs are the same for each project, since visretain is for layer settings for XREFs.

[Tom Beauford]

Couple tools that may help:

1. VPLAYER => Freeze You can freeze a layer in all viewports.

2. New VP Freeze in Layer Manager for a layer that you want frozen in future viewports.

3. Autocad 2008 Annotative Objects for displaying according to scale of the viewport.

[Mike_R]

Sounds to me that this was probably done through reactors. Everytime the layer command completes, check to see if there's a new layer, and if so, rename the layer to match the VP name/handle, etc. and then freeze it in all viewports except for the active one. Then save the current layer state, overwriting the old one, so there's something to refer to if the layer command is run again.

Hope that makes sense.... It's still dark outside... :shock:

[tedg]

And they would need to make sure the reference names of all the XREFs are the same for each project, since visretain is for layer settings for XREFs.
True, I was thinking more basic then that, not knowing if they used xrefs.
My theory would only work in a perfect world....( if no new layers were created), they would show up in all of the viewports.

And we all know what a perfect world we work in....

:lol: