Red or Blue Square in Active Layer Name?

LayOut
1

What does the little red or blue square in the active layer name line in the Layer tray mean? They seem to come and go with no pattern. See attached image. Thanks

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2

That tells you the layer the selected entity is on. So whatever you have selected in your LO file is on the Linework layer.

If the square is red, that indicates the entity is on a shared layer. In your example screen shot, if you select an entity on the On Every Page layer, it’ll show a red square instead of blue.

3

Thank You. That helps a lot since I am currently struggling with entity / layer management issues in my current document.

4

You’re quite welcome. How do you mean you’re struggling with it?

5

Just the LayOut learning curve. I am trying to get the entities on the correct layers as the layers are shared or not shared, and getting the things correctly arranged on the Layers stack order for visibility. I think I made things overly complex for a fairly early outing.

6

Ah… I see. It probably is a good idea to keep things simple at first. Remember that unlike in SketchUp, layer order does matter in LayOut and layers at the top of the list will show over layers farther down. My templates have layers set up like this:

Text (this is for labels and other text that is not shared between pages.)
Dimensions
Hatches (this includes any drawing entities I add in LayOut directly such as dashed lines hatched areas and such.
Model3
Model2
Model1 (the model layers are for SketchUp viewports. I often stack viewports thus the multiple layers for them. sometimes I’ll add additional model layers, too.)
Title text (this is text shared between pages such as title blocks and page numbers)
Borders (also shared between pages)

Note that you can right click on entities and change their layer assignment as long as the layer isn’t locked. I periodically check to make sure I have things on the right layers by turning off visibility (eye icon) and looking for things that should be on that layer. If I find anything, I make the adjustment.

In general I also try to work up the layer stack. It doesn’t always work but for the most part I can get viewports placed before I add the dashed lines, dimensions, and other text.

7

Perfect. I think I will adopt your layer scheme. I have not dipped my toes into viewport stacking yet. Maybe tomorrow.

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