As we were discussing the command of the month at the November 1997 meeting, I realized that there is far more strength in DDlmodes in the release 14 version of AutoCAD than what could be presented in the normal amount of time given. So, as I was driving somewhere between the Library and my home that evening, it was decided that a part II was required for this topic. By the way, if you have not yet downloaded the Whip Viewer version 3.0, you need to do so as I intend to use AutoCAD as my graphic tool as much as possible this year. OK onward.......

The November Command of the Month ended by looking at what DDlmodes had to offer as far as manipulation of layers. Recall that the discussion was how layers could be turned on and off, frozen and thawed in specific view ports using DDlmodes. Release 14 has added several new features that warrant further discussion. Notice that the DDlmodes dialogue box has a new button on the lower portion of the screen called details. Click on this button and all of the properties as well as the status of the highlighted (not necessarily the current) layer are given. In this case a layer called angle is highlighted and the layer is on and it has a color of 30. Click on the color pull down and notice that not only the basic colors are available for you to select for editing, but you can click on the "other line" and the 256 color chart will appear and allow you to select any of those colors. The same will work with the line types, simply click on the pull down and you can edit the line type with a click of the mouse.

Release 14 also gives you the ability to filter layers based on six different layer status. Click on the show pull down and you will see the quick six filters. All, All In Use, All Unused, All Xref Dependant, All Not Xref Dependant, All That Pass Filter, and Set Filter dialogue. The first four filters will quickly allow you to determine which layers will be shown in the display list by filtering layers based on their current status. The Set Filter dialogue is by far the most detailed way to filter your layers. Here you can filter layers by their name using the astrix as a wild card. By doing this you can type in "a*" and you will get all layers that begin with the letter "A" that "Pass the Filter". AutoCAD will even allow you to place the astrix ahead of the letter(s) in the layer name search which makes filtering by names a very powerful tool. Other filtering options in the Filter dialogue box will allow you to show only the layers that are frozen, thawed, on or off, as well as any combination of the available filters.

Setting filters is a quick and effective way to build AutoCAD drawings that are layer intensive. Some of the best uses of layers are blocks that are built and then inserted on a specific layer. You can then manipulate your drawing by freezing and thawing in your paper space viewports.

DDlmodes also allows you to filter linetypes. Click on the linetype tab in the DDlmodes dialogue box. Here you can select the current linetype or use filters to manipulate linetypes. Two defaults will be in the linetype description, "Bylayer and Byblock", and Bylayer is the default current linetype. Four of the six filters are available in the show pull down to help in linetype manipulation. Release 14 has given you a few other tricks in the linetype area, and those are the ability to scale linetypes either globally or you can scale the current object.