Creating Different Drawing Representation

We have completed our AutoCAD drawing by creating floor plan. We set several layers when we created wall and column. Why? We are going to create different drawing representative for relatively large and small scale. How? We are going to create two layer states.

Open your drawing, or download this DWG file. The drawing look like this.

This is going to be how it look with all the details. Let’s just save this layer states. Click from your AutoCAD ribbon, home>layers>unsaved layer state>New Layer State.

Give it name ‘high details’ and give the description something like given below.

That’s it! You’ve just save a layer state!

Now we are going to define another layer state. Open your layer manager.

Freeze these layers:

1. A-Column-Structure,
2. A-Wall-Pattern, and
3. A-Wall-Structure.

Now change the lineweight and color for these layers:

1. A-Column: 0.15, blue
2. A-Door: 0.05,red
3. A-Wall: 0.09, black.

No particular reason why we change the color, only I want the changes easily be recognized. We change the lineweight so it’s not going to be too thick when we plot it in large scale.

Now save another layer state. Give it name ‘low details’ and give appropriate description. There you go, you already have two layer states!

How can we use it? Easy. Just click your layer states in Layers section. You should see those two layer states there: high details and low details. Try to change it and see the difference.

Now you have high details representation and low level representation. Now our AutoCAD works just like Revit, isn’t it? ;) Well, nothing wrong to adapt other CAD software workflow to AutoCAD!

Now open layout. I’ve provide one layout for this AutoCAD tutorial. Both of them look the same, aren’t they? They both have all layers on.

Now double click inside the right viewport. After your right viewport activated, change the layer states to ‘low details’. This should change the right viewport to low details, while the left viewport still showing the high details. However, I found this doesn’t always work. Sometimes, both of them will change their representation to new layer states. But don’t worry, if you have this problem, you can follow these steps.

Restore both of your viewport to high details. Activate your right viewport again. Now from layer state list, select ‘manage layer states’.

In the layer states manager dialog box, select ‘low details’ state, and click restore at the bottom of this dialog box. Now you’ll have your right viewport with low details, while your left viewport showing high details!

Now look at these viewport. You see same drawing in different viewports, and both showing different colors and lineweight. How is that possible. Well, that would be explained on other post. That’s how ‘layer properties per-viewport’ works.