Drawing layer and level management |
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Release 9.2
Last modified August 15, 2007 |
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About drawing layer and level management
Drawing layers and levels are used to organize entities within a CAD drawing. You can think of them as a subset of a drawing. For example, all entities that pertain to water lines may reside in a layer named water lines. Most well-organized CAD drawings will follow this standard of placing data in an appropriate drawing layer. However, it is possible that some CAD drawings will not follow this standard.
In ArcGIS, drawing layers serve a similar purpose for CAD features by providing an additional level of organization within a CAD feature layer. Just like in a CAD program, you can control the visibility of drawing layers in ArcGIS. This can easily be done via the Layer Properties dialog box. Additionally, drawing layer information is represented as feature attributes, so you can query based on a drawing layer attribute value. One example of this would be using a query definition to control the display of a drawing layer. The remaining content in this section illustrates how you can manage your drawing layers in ArcGIS.
An overview of the CAD Drawing Layers tab
The Drawing Layers tab allows you to view and change the visibility of drawing layers that are in a CAD layer. This tab applies to CAD feature classes and CAD drawing datasets. It reports the name of the drawing layer, its color, and its line style and supports tools to control their visibility.
The drawing layer names are listed in alphabetical order. The drawing layer's color property is represented by a color symbol and the line style property reports the line type attribute value. These drawing layer properties report how the drawing layer was defined in the CAD drawing file.
Here is an illustration of the Drawing Layers tab:
- Layer Name: The name of the drawing layer or level
- Color: The color setting of the drawing layer
- Line Style: The line type setting of the drawing layer
- Enable All: Enables, or turns on the visibility of, all drawing layers
- Disable All: Disables, or turns off the visibility of, all drawing layers
- Restore Original: Resets the visibility of a drawing layer to its original state (how it appeared when it was initially added to the map)
- Restore Last: Resets the visibility of drawing layers to a previous state up to the last time OK or Apply was clicked
- Apply to Dataset: Applies drawing layer visibility settings to all CAD feature classes of the CAD feature dataset
| Control | Function |
| Enable All | Enables, or turns on the visibility of, all drawing layers |
| Disable All | Disables, or turns off the visibility of, all drawing layers |
| Restore Original | Resets the visibility of a drawing layers to its original state (how it appeared when it was initially added to the map) |
| Restore Last | Resets the visibility of drawing layers to a previous state up to the last time OK or Apply was clicked |
| Apply to Dataset | Applies drawing layer visibility settings to all CAD feature classes of the CAD feature dataset |
Layer display properties
By default, all drawing layers are set to be visible when initially created in a CAD drawing. They are not frozen or locked. These settings are controlled by the user. There are times when you need to turn layers off, freeze them, or lock them. When these types of CAD drawings are accessed in ArcGIS, ArcGIS will respect the drawing layer settings and display them accordingly. The following table shows the various states in which a drawing layer can exist and how ArcGIS will represent them on the map.
| Drawing layer status in CAD program | Visible in ArcGIS |
| On | Yes |
| Off | No |
| Frozen | No |
| Locked | Yes |
How to control the visibility of drawing layers
How to enable the visibility of a drawing layer
- Right-click the CAD layer in the table of contents and click Properties.
- Click the Drawing Layers tab.
- Check the check box adjacent to the drawing layer that you want to display (turn on).
- Click OK.
How to disable the visibility of a drawing layer
- Right-click the CAD layer in the table of contents and click Properties.
- Click the Drawing Layers tab.
- Check the check box adjacent to the drawing layer that you do not want to display (turn off).
- Click OK.
How to enable the visibility of all drawing layers
- Right-click the CAD layer in the table of contents and click Properties.
- Click the Drawing Layers tab.
- Click Enable All.
- Click OK.
How to disable the visibility of all drawing layers
- Right-click the CAD layer in the table of contents and click Properties.
- Click the Drawing Layers tab.
- Click Disable All.
- Click Apply or OK.
- Click OK to close the dialog box.
How to restore the original visibility settings of drawing layers
- Right-click the CAD layer in the table of contents and click Properties.
- Click the Drawing Layers tab.
- Click Restore Original.
- Click OK.
How to restore the previous visibility settings of drawing layers
- Right-click the CAD layer in the table of contents and click Properties.
- Click the Drawing Layers tab.
- Click Restore Last.
- Click OK.
How to apply the visibility settings of drawing layers for an entire CAD feature dataset
- Right-click the CAD layer in the table of contents and click Properties.
- Click the Drawing Layers tab.
- Change the drawing layer display settings in the list box or by clicking the drawing layer display buttons.
- Click Apply to Dataset.
- Click OK.