About Working With Layer Groups

With the Layer Properties Manager, you can create different layer groups to produce working views and backgrounds from large building data sets. Layer groups help you work more efficiently in drawings that have many layers. You can change the settings of a layer group to apply the changes to all layers in the group at one time. For example, you can lock a layer group to lock all the layers in the filter.

Types of Layer Groups

There are five types of layer groups:

Type	Description
All	Is always present and lists all the layers and other layer groups in the drawing.
Xref	Lists any layers in external reference files linked with the current drawing. This group is automatically created when you xref a drawing into the current drawing.
group filters	Contain layers that you have assigned to them.
property filters	Contain layers based on a filter that you specify. You can base filters on layer names and other layer properties.
layer standards filters	Contain layers associated with a specified standards category.

Rules for Layer Groups

The following group rules apply when you are creating and working with layer groups:

• You can list a layer in more than one layer group.
• Multiple listings of the same layer must always have identical property settings. For example, a layer that is a member of two groups cannot be a different color in each group.
• You cannot list a layer twice in a group.
• You can delete layer groups without affecting the layers in the group.
• Changing one of the properties of a layer group changes that property for all the layers in that group, except where the change would be invalid. For example, it is not possible to freeze the current layer.
• Layer group names need not be unique.
• There is no naming convention for layer groups. Group names can include spaces, non-alphanumeric characters, and both uppercase and lowercase letters.
• Xref layer groups cannot contain other filter groups.

Managing Layer Groups

You can add and subtract layers from layer groups. You can change the standard AutoCAD properties for the layers in groups, rename layer groups, delete layer groups, and change the filters in filter groups.