Block creation and layers - best practices

[danbr]

I've had a couple of problems with blocks created inside a drawing, and was wondering if someone has some "best practices" suggestions.

• If a block is created in a drawing, it appears that the block "definition" is on the layer it was created on. If the created block has entities on multiple layers, the definition retains that information
• If you hide that layer, all the references to that block are hidden. If the created block has entities on multiple layers and you hide one of them, part of the block disappears from each reference.
• If you explode one of the references, the resulting items (lines, etc.) are placed on the original layer, not the same layer as the reference

Any suggestions about the best way to manage this would be welcome! For now, I've done:

• Create all my blocks on layer 0 (which I normally don't use)
• Explicitly set line types/colors/weights for all the block elements
• Try to avoid exploding blocks

Thanks!

Dan

[andrew]

Please refer also to this tutorial:
https://www.qcad.org/en/tutorial-layers ... attributes

Perhaps, what you are missing is the "By Block" attribute value. Fixed attributes are almost never a good idea.

[jimherndon]

I still having trouble with blocks being created on one layer and when inserted using the Block List insert icon on another layer they will show the new layer on the Property Editor but you cannot hide their visibility for the layer they were inserted on. Thank you.

[andrew]

If you insert a block on layer "A" and switch off layer "A", the block references of that block on layer "A" will be hidden.

Please check also your preferences under:
Edit > Application Preferences > Widgets > Layer List

If Show frozen column is checked, you have both visibility and frozen columns enabled in your layer list. In this case, you would have to freeze the layer to achieve the same result.

If you can't solve your problem, please attach your drawing file and include a full screenshot of your QCAD application window.

[jimherndon]

Got it working ***** Thank you Andrew!!!!