134 — Views and layers¶

A panel sheet carries several trades at once: connections, braces and picks, reveals, greenplate, hardware, dimensions, the title block. When you are checking one trade, the others are noise. Four buttons help you control what is on screen: two for layers, one that saves the arrangement of panels on a site under a name, and one that brings the whole drawing back into view.

Where it is¶

All four buttons are on the ConstructiVision Site & Tools toolbar, side by side:

Button	Tooltip	What runs
View All Layers	“View All Layers”	the ConstructiVision menu route for View → All Layers
View Select Layers	“View Select Layers”	the ConstructiVision menu route for View → Select Layers
Save Layer State	“Named multi-save of the current layer state”	the typed command `CV-SAVELAY`
Zoom Extents	“Zoom to drawing extents”	AutoCAD’s own `ZOOM`, Extents option

The first two are also on the ConstructiVision pull-down menu, under View.

Try it on AAA039 and the riverside site¶

View Select Layers is shown on AAA039, a panel from the Arlington Airport A sample project. Save Layer State is shown on the riverside site drawing that lesson 12 finishes with, which holds two panels, TP08-001 and TP08-012.

1 View All Layers¶

Open AAA039.dwg.
Click View All Layers. No dialog opens.
The panel redraws with every layer on: the panel and its features, every dimension, the weld schedule at the top right, the Embed Placement Key and the title block. When this lesson was checked, the current layer was 0 afterwards.

It runs the same route as ConstructiVision → View → All Layers.

2 View Select Layers¶

On a panel drawing¶

Open AAA039.dwg.
Click View Select Layers. The ConstructiVision – Panel Layer Control dialog opens.

Under Panel Layers, each trade has a box on the left, and most have a box on the right for that trade’s dimensions:

Trade	Its dimensions
Connections	Connection dimensions
Braces/Picks	Brace/Pick dimensions
Reveal	Reveal dimensions
Greenplate	Greenplate dimensions
Custom	Custom dimensions
Panel Number	Perimeter dimensions
Hardware
Title/Border

On AAA039 every box was ticked when the dialog opened.

Untick what you do not want to see, then click OK. The dialog closes and those layers are hidden. When this lesson was checked, unticking Connections and clicking OK hid both the connection layer and the connection dimension layer: a trade’s dimensions show only together with the trade itself. ConstructiVision hides them by freezing the layers, so they also show as frozen in AutoCAD’s Layer Properties.
Click View Select Layers again. The boxes show what the drawing shows now, so Connections is unticked.
Cancel closes the dialog and changes nothing, even if you ticked or unticked boxes first.

On a site drawing¶

On a site drawing the same button opens ConstructiVision – Site Layer Control instead. When this lesson was checked on the ConstructiVision Sample Building site drawing CSBsite1, it had two columns:

Site layers	Their dimensions
Panels (OFF freezes Layer 0 for faster Regens)
Panel Numbers
Braces/Picks
Reveal
Greenplate
Hardware
Wall/Slab Line
Connections	Connection dimensions
Custom	Custom dimensions
Grids	Grid dimensions
Slab	Slab dimensions
Footings	Footing dimensions

Site Options → View Selected Layers (lesson 11, Step 4) opens a different, single-column dialog.

3 Save Layer State¶

Read this first: the button name says “layer state”, but what it saves is the layout of the panels. Its prompt asks for a layout name, and it reports how many panels it saved. It records the arrangement of the panels in the site drawing under a name you choose, so you can keep more than one arrangement.

Open the riverside site drawing from lesson 12.
Click Save Layer State (or type CV-SAVELAY).
The command line lists the layouts already saved in this drawing, then asks for a name:
```
[SAVELAY] existing saves: <unnamed>
[SAVELAY] Layout name (blank = unnamed, alnum/_/- only):
```
<unnamed> is the layout that Save Layout in Site Options records (lesson 12).
Type a name of letters, numbers, _ or -, and press Enter. The run typed K235A:
```
[SAVELAY] saved 2 panels as "K235A" -> cons_list_K235A XRecord
[SAVELAY] Ready.
```
Both panels were saved. The layout is kept inside the drawing; no file was written to the project folder.
Save under a name that already exists, and you are asked before anything is replaced:
```
[SAVELAY] existing saves: <unnamed> K207
[SAVELAY] Layout name (blank = unnamed, alnum/_/- only): K207
[SAVELAY] "K207" already exists. Overwrite? [Y/N] <N>:
```
Press Enter or type N to keep the old one ([SAVELAY] cancelled.). Type Y to replace it ([SAVELAY] saved 2 panels as "K207" ...).

On a panel drawing there is nothing to save. On AAA039 the same prompt, answered tutorial-check, printed:

[SAVELAY] No panel xrefs found to save.
[SAVELAY] Ready.

4 Zoom Extents¶

Click Zoom Extents.
AutoCAD zooms so the whole drawing fits on screen. The button runs AutoCAD’s own ZOOM command with the Extents option; nothing ConstructiVision-specific happens.

On AAA039 the command line shows AutoCAD’s own prompt answered for you:

Command: _.zoom
[All/Center/Dynamic/Extents/Previous/Scale/Window/Object] <real time>: _e
Regenerating model.

What you see / Reading the result¶

Panel Layer Control is a checklist of trades, not the AutoCAD layer manager. Each trade has its own box, and its dimensions have a separate box beside it.
Save Layer State reports on the command line how many panels it saved and under what name. On the riverside site that was 2 panels. The names you have saved are listed each time you run it.

What this lesson does not cover¶

The Save Layer State name. The button and its tooltip describe a layer state, but the command saves the panel layout. This mismatch is a known open item (CV-3359).
Layer presets for printing. See lesson 135 and the plotting how-to.

Watch the lesson¶

The video covers parts 1 and 2 on AAA039: View All Layers, then View Select Layers with Connections unticked, OK, and the dialog reopened. It does not show Save Layer State on the riverside site or Zoom Extents.