Instantaneous layer visibility feedback.

[Anonymous]

It would be very helpful if layer visibility would update instantaneously from the layers dialog box. Useful with autocad imported files or other situations where there is a lot of layers that need organizing. Checking/unchecking a layer, pressing ok and then checking if it was the right layer frequently makes me want to hit the hardware of my computer. The software in other ways is ok and needs no punishment.

I apologize if such possibilty is already available by setting it up somewhere in settings.

Sincerely,

Angry cad user.

[Chazz]

It is not currently a possibility and has been requested before. The whole idea of a "modal" layers dialog box (i.e. one that you have to dismiss before you see the changes or before you can even do anything else) feels very 1996. However, layer sets, contextual hide/show layers, saved views, etc all help to lessen the pain. Once I have a project setup and am in the groove I don'y find it much of an issue.

[Anonymous]

I have long felt that a layers palette would be nice. Something that would let you quickly show, hide, lock and unlock layers. This could be an expansion/fix/replacement for the flaky quick layers palette.

The modal layers dialog could be retained or merged into an improved attribute manager for the heavy lifting of creating, renaming and adjusting layers and combinations.

[Bricklyne Clarence]

Can I just piggy-back a request onto this wish since it also has to do with Layers and visibility settings?

It would be nice if ArchiCAD allowed users to adjust the opacity (or transparency) of overall layers - which would even be printable - frm the Layer Manager.

A slider interface allowing one to gradually go from full opaque to full transparent (basically - 'off' setting) would save lots of time for quick prints where one didn't want to go and mess around with pen settings to punch out a quick print that includes certain elements (like Furniture or MEP objects for example) isolated on one layer, but not necessarily turn them off or change their pen settings.

It would also be useful in a general workflow sense of being able to adjust drawing elements on the screen as you're working and as the drawings become more populated with items and harder to read without turning some of them off, but when you don't really want to turn them off completely.

A couple of other programs I use have thins capability and it seems pretty standard, and in a general sense pretty intuitive to working in a visual space.
In a different sense it also seems related to the Virtual Trace and how we work using it and adjusting the transparency of the trace reference, and would just be taking that capability and extending it to the actual active view and controlling it by individual layers.