Do you use layers in drawings? How often?

Following in the same line of questioning as with my question about
blocks. As before, prior to my current employer I had only used one
layer in about 6 years and it was to toggle the visibility of a note
that was on that layer, prior to the drawing being issued for
production the layer was turned On so a note stating "Preliminary"
would be visible, the once approved that layer would be turned off. My
current employer (a long time acad company) uses tons of layers, about
20 per drawing on average. I am trying to convince them they do not
need these layers.

So here are my questions...

Do you use layers in drawings and for what purposes?
How many layers per drawing?
How often (Every drawing? Rarely? Never?)

Thanks

Sam

 

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
http://sw.fcsuper.com

 

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
http://sw.fcsuper.com

 

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.

 

If you feel you need autolayer assignment, I do invite you to send in
an E.R. to SolidWorks and ask for it.

Matt Lorono
http://sw.fcsuper.com