Start the command and within the active viewport select the layers you want to remain visible in the active layer but become VP Frozen in all other Viewports The feature VP Freeze Layers in All Viewports Except Current does exactly as described. Layer Off actually has the same option meaning you can use the Layer Off tool to select objects in the active viewport and have the layers VP frozen opposed to being turned off within the entire drawing. You have the option for either Freeze or VPFreeze. When you start the command, before picking anything, right-click and select Settings, then Viewports. Since the electrical layers will no longer be required you can toggle the New VP Freeze option meaning that it will stay visible in the existing viewports but will automatically be invisible for each new viewport The Layer tool Thaw All Layers has no effect on VP Frozen Layers… but Layer Freeze does and it includes a toggle to either freeze the layer of the selected object or VP freeze the layer. Where can you use this? Say you are detailing a house and just finished detailing all the electrical requirements and you will be moving on to the plumbing and HVAC. While on a Paper Space Layout activate a viewport (easiest is to just double-click inside one) and from the Layer Manager toggle the VP Freeze toggle for the layers you do not want to appear in the Viewport New VP Freeze toggles the layer to be automatically Viewport Frozen in each New viewport you create. So what can be do for a specific viewport? This is where VP Freeze and New VP Freeze comes into play. This removes the layer from view from Model Space AND all Paper Space Viewports.
Layers can be toggled OFF or FROZEN to make them invisible and not shown. Within the Layer Manager you can adjust the styles assigned to each layer Freezing Layers You will be prompted to select the Named Style to apply to the drawing.This can be altered at anytime from the Page Setup dialog. Color Dependent drawings can be converted to Named Styles using the command CONVERTPSTYLES. One catch about AutoCAD and its Plot Styles is that each drawing can only use one type, as in you cannot access both CTB and STB from the same drawing. Notice how many aspects of the object can be set with the Plot Style, including things like Line End Style and Line Join Style which cannot be configured anywhere else.
To create (or modify) a Plot Style go to the Application Menu (big “A” in the upper left corner) and from the Print sub-menu select Manage Plot Styles. From the Explorer window that appears select Add-a-Plot Style Wizard Here’s a short video showing the process.
With AutoCAD 2000 Autodesk introduced Named Plot Styles (STB) in which you define named styles and assign these to your layers, removing the dependency on colors. You would not want to assign green (from the above example) with its thicker linewidth to your centerline layer. Although Color Dependent works in many situations it is limiting as you then need to pay attention to which colors you are assigning to your layers. For example you could make anything green plot black with a thicker lineweight and anything yellow plot purple with a lighter lineweight. With Color Dependent Styles (CTB) you use colors to control how the drawing will plot. Image courtesy of Steven Depolo via Flickr Plot Stylesīack in the day (pre-AutoCAD 2000) there was one Plot Style option, which turned into Color Dependent Styles.
We can control the visibility and properties of the layers per viewport and there are many tools for making it easy to accomplish. A big component of presenting the Paper Space Layout is Layers. Paper Space Layouts really aren’t that much different in that we want to take our model space geometry and using AutoCAD’s tool-set (slight of hand), sell it to the audience by presenting it in a way that is easy for them to understand, seeing only what we want them to see. Magic is partially about slight of hand, “ Now you see it, now you don’t” with the other part about selling it to the audience, making them believe that the bird just appeared or that they did really just see a rabbit come out of the hat.