Happy New Year everyone! As Autodesk is kind enough to give us a week off during the holidays - it seems to be taking some time for me to get ramped back up and running! I didn't go anywhere during the holidays - I just stayed home and enjoyed some family time. I hope that all of you had a nice holiday season and are ready for 2012!
A Happy New Year Tip on Translating Layers
Most of us have to abide by some type of standard in our AutoCAD drawings, and those standards nearly always involve layers. If you've ever needed to change a vast number of layer names or properties in your AutoCAD drawings you know how time consuming it can be! Many releases ago the LAYTRANS command was added into AutoCAD - but I find that so few people really know about it.
Before executing LAYTRANS - you'll need to have a drawing with the correct layers and layer properties. You will be mapping the layers in the current drawing to this drawing.
LAYTRANS can be found on the Manage tab of the ribbon (Layer Translator)
The layers from your current drawing will appear on the left side of the Layer Translator dialog.
Pick "Load" and select the drawing file with the correct layers - those layers will load into the dialog as seen below.
now you simply map the layers in your current drawing to the layers in the drawing with the correct layers and properties. The results of the Mappings will appear in the dialog. When all the layers are mapped a simple Translate will make quick work of the changes.
If you have several drawings with the same mapping - you'll want to Save this file in the dialog (it will create a .DWS file). Then the next time you enter LAYTRANS you will Load up the DWS file and the mapping will happen instantly (hoorah!).
Using LAYTRANS is much easier than making the changes manually in the Layer dialog box. Give it a try - it might just save you so much time you can go home early! (alright...that rarely happens).
Happy New Year!
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