Do you use layers in drawings? How often?

I use layers very little. Primarily to aid in the dimensioning of an angle, I will sometimes sketch a reference line-then move it to a hidden layer.

That's it.

jk

I use layers only to meet the requirements of customers who have highly structured standards for .dwg deliverables. Even so, most of that is managed with the dwg/dxf mapping tool.

Apart from that, the only uses I can think of for layers would be groups of annotations that need to be turned on or off, or the odd case where a lot of 2d geometry has to be sketched in the drawing with special line weights and fonts. Hydraulic or wiring schematics would be examples.

Good luck, you have a long row to hoe.

We put the dimensions & other annotations on a Dim layer and make them red. That way it's easier to work on the drawing because the geometry is black, and dims are red. That's about it, though.

WT

Sam,

I never use layers on a solidworks drawing, and I find the use of layers in SolidWorks or any other software to be annoying at best. My opinion is don't use them. :) I've seen some people who like to use them for particular types of objects, just as all dimensions or annotations. Personally, I don't see the value in this unless you have the need to turn off all of your annotations or dims at once. I've never had that need once in the who time I've been using S/W (since 1998).

Layers only served a purpose in old ACAD back when they needed a way to tell plotters what link thickness to plot without creating objects in ACAD with different thicknesses (because different thickness lines where a tremendous resource hog back when everyone was running

286's). These days, I don't really see any need for them since any properties of an object (thickness/color/font) are now stored directly with that object instead of being applied only when plotting.

Matt Lorono

Wayne, I use the system color options to control the color of dimensions in a drawing, I set driven dims to be red so all the dims on a drawing, and in the model, are red with out the use of a layer. This works if you do not import dims from the model.

Sam

Dale, I am not sure I will hoeing this row much longer. Basically they were sold on solidworks with the thinking that they would be able to continue doing everything like they did in acad, faster than acad and parametric. And that they would be able to "clone" drawings (see my other post on block usage). They really do not design products in the way I think of design, from a mechanical background. More like "cookie cutter" drawing, same basic product over and over sometimes a little bigger, sometimes a little smaller.

The funniest part about using the layers is that they are created by a

3rd party app that generates the drawings for the user, they say the layers were included based on user requests. All the users (prior to me) were acad users. So the 3rd party app goes about generating this drawing putting various components on the appropriate layers and setting the attributes of those layers (color, line font, line thickness etc...) so that now the line type for the componets are controlled by the line type assigned to the layer. So a componet that should be displayed with solid lines (not hidden) but is assigned to a layer whose line font is set to hidden line the component will show with hidden lines anyway, basically the line font assigned to the layer takes precedence and contols the components line font.

Reference my next post, macro to delete layers.....

Sam

i won't bother with discussing acad habits/methods. ;)

we have 3 layers. orange = custom properties dark blue = notes/annotations dark green = border/title block

dims are the same dark blue as notes/annotations but controlled by system options.

I don't use layers, and would consider any drawing that used them in SolidWorks that I run across to be annoying. Layers are a hold over of the old days when everyone was running ACAD on the latest 286 computer. They were used as a crouch to apply values to entities at the point of plotting, instead of just storing those values with the entity in the file, so it was the plotter that would determine line thickness and color. Nowadays we are all on Pentiums or Xeons of some sort or another. The power of these systems and the size of storage space now available all but makes layers obsolete. Every windows program now operates under the principle of wysiwyg. All information is stored in the file itself. You can make a line thicker or make it blue just by changing its properties.

In my years of using SolidWorks (since 1998), I've never once ever had the need or desire to use Layers. Honestly, I hated them in the years I was an ACAD user (since 1990). In S/W, I've never had a need to turn off all annotations or dims on a drawing, which is about all layers are good for these days.

Matt Lorono

We use them on every drawing.

TOP

I put everything but the part geometry on a layer so it can easily be turned off or stripped in our vendors nesting software.

No - I never use layers.

It would be nice if SW could assign dimensions to a layer, Notes to it own layer, etc.

samuari.