I do find it somewhat remarkable that in the last 15 years I haven’t needed to add any more layers.Ī description of what goes on the layer – pretty obvious and straight-forward. If you are wondering why they have the names that they do, I’ll get to that in a minute. This is actually the name of all the layers. In order for the offices to trade drawings between them, our office had to follow this naming convention. At the time, Microstation didn’t allow you to a) name your layers, you had to use numbers, and b) you were limited to 63 total layers. In the old days, the firm I worked for had multiple offices … some were on AutoCAD and some were on Microstation. The numbers don’t really serve a purpose anymore. For now, here is a breakdown of my layer list: What’s an “x” layer”? I’ll get to that in just a minute. When I am drawing that same window in elevation, I draw it on several of the “x” layers. On the other end of the spectrum, all details, wall and building sections, interior and exterior elevations, are all drawn purely by line weight and as a result, are not on a layer that is specific to the content.Ĭonfused? Let’s try this – when I draw a window in plan view, I put it on the “FP Windows” layer. I typically want these to pop out a bit from their surroundings – which in most cases would be the cabinetry. For example – the layer ‘FP Equipment’ will always have appliances, water heaters, AC units, etc. Since the layers are primarily broken down by plans and then everything else, every layer (and the content on that layer) has a consistent hierarchy to how important it is – which means I can set the pen weight of a single layer and it will consistently look appropriate. Skip this next paragraph unless you are a glutton for technical punishment Very rarely (as in 99.9% of the time) I might come up with some reason why I want to modify the standard of a layer but I generally try to avoid it. This means I can assign pen weights and line types to a specific layer and never touch it again. If you look through the layers here, every layer that is represented exists only because I need to control when and where it shows up.
I should start off by telling you that all of my drawings are broken down into 3 groups: I have 69 layers total and I haven’t needed to add a layer in over a decade – everything that I have needed to draw is represented on this list. Now that my office is 100% Revit, the only time I use this setup when is when I have to draft my playhouse construction drawings. The image above is the Holy Grail to my drawings – at least it was when I was still drawing in AutoCAD. To that end, and because I can’t take receiving another email on the subject, I am writing today’s post on layer names, pen weights, and layer organization, with prejudice. The fact that it looks like I care about the way they drawings looks should only reinforce to the contractor that they had better take my drawings as seriously as I do. I want my drawings to read clearly and with precision. I care about this stuff, but it is simply a means to an end. That, coupled with my beliefs on perception is reality and that you dress for the role you want, I don’t want my primary responsibility to be the “CAD Guy.”
First and foremost, I do not consider myself a particularly gifted technology-focused person – compared to some of the people I know, I am barely mediocre when I am at my best. Just for the record, writing a post on AutoCAD layers, pen weights, line types, and pen colors, is almost the last thing on my list of things I want to be doing.
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