Michael’s Corner

Michael's Corner is a monthly publication written by Michael E. Beall, Autodesk Authorized Author and peripatetic AutoCAD trainer. Michael travels all over the USA, bringing his fantastic experience and great understanding of AutoCAD to his clients. Michael's Corner brings together many of the tips, tricks and methods developed during these training sessions for the benefit of all users.

Michael's Corner provides something for every AutoCAD user. Every month, a number of articles cover a wide range of topics, suitable for users at all levels, including "The Basics" for those just starting out. Essentially, the aim of Michael's Corner is to help all AutoCAD users work smarter and faster.

This month…

From the Vault

Originally published May 2004

EXPRESS: Layer Isolate

When you receive a drawing from an outside source, to find out what you just "inherited" you could use the Layer Walk procedure to cruise through the layers. In the case where you really don't know (or possibly care) what the layer name is, and simply want certain layers to remain on and turn the rest of 'em off, use the Isolate Object's Layer routine.

1. On the ET: Layers toolbar, click the Isolate Object's Layer button and select the layers in the drawing that you want to remain On (this will not work if selecting Xref layers; use Layer Off to turn Xref layers Off).
2. After selecting objects representing layers to remain On, press <ENTER> and the geometry on all the other layers is turned Off (not frozen).

Major Note: In the Bonus Tools you might remember there was also a button for Layer Unisolate. This was very handy when, after making the necessary edits or changes to a drawing in which layers had been isolated, you wanted to put the layers back the way they were prior to using the isolate routine. (This one is not even in the Express Tools Help and I should have made it this month's challenge.) Type LAYUNISO to unisolate the isolated layers. [I'm sure they buried this because they expected folks to name a layer state with Layer Manager prior to isolating layers. Right. Like that's gonna happen when you're in a hurry.]

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