Where are all of these layers coming from !?!?!?

If you use AutoCAD, you know about having an overabundance of layers found in your drawings.   There have been plenty of times when I said, “Who the heck would give a layer a name like that”?  I have seen some very strange layer names in my life.  Some with weird symbols, others written in a different language (which is all well and good, if you understand the language they were written in).

Anyway, where are all of these layers coming from and who is the culprit here?  Well, one answer is that those layers were either added to a block or downloaded with the blocks.

There are various locations where you could go to download blocks off of the internet.  Most tend to go towards the “Get Your Free Blocks Here!” types of sites and while they are some very good sites where you can find some (I will share link below).   This is where the layer naming issues could have been conceived.

When you download blocks from the internet, you ARE NOT necessarily downloading blocks, in most cases you are downloading drawing files (.dwg).  When you insert that so-called block into your opened drawing, you also insert every single setting defined within that drawing including layers, text and dimension styles, leader styles, and other blocks, as well as many other settings.  So, the simplest symbol can contain tons of other settings that you go unseen until you come across them when using other commands in AutoCAD. 

Yes, you can go through the list of layers and delete them or you can select multiple layers to get rid of them all at once, BUT (and it’s big one) have you ever tried to do that only to receive a message telling you that “…THE LAYER CANNOT BE DELETED”?    There are certain rules when it comes to deleting layers.   AutoCAD rules say that layers zero and defpoints, layers containing objects, the current layer, and layers of externally referenced drawings cannot be deleted.  Thing is, none of these apply to the layer that you are trying to delete, or so you think.

Again, the culprit lives within the block definition that you downloaded.   You see, even if the block has yet to be inserted into the drawing, the layer is still in use.  The block is using it and it cannot be deleted.  The only way to delete this layer is to open the block within the Block Editor and move the objs from that said layer to another (in my opinion, Layer 0).  Once done, you will able to delete the pesky layer from your drawing.

This is the MAIN REASON why when I teach how to create blocks or download blocks from the internet is be sure that ALL OF THE GEOMETRY in the block is on Layer Zero !!!  Because this layer exists in every AutoCAD drawing file and inserting the block into other files will not bring in any unwanted guests into our house.

I cover this process in my AutoCAD Level 2 class.

In a future blog I will go over how to quickly scale blocks that were not drawn to actual size.

Thanks for reading !!!  If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out !!

Joe D