Skip to content

Layer state and colour

Every row in the Quick Layer popup (MDQUICKLAYER) carries the same controls you would open the Layer Properties Manager for. Using them does not close the popup, so a run of layer housekeeping happens in one place.

Quick Layer rows, each carrying its on/off, freeze, lock, plot and colour controls

Control What it does
Lightbulb Turns the layer on or off
Snowflake Freezes or thaws the layer
Padlock Locks or unlocks the layer
Printer Includes the layer in plots, or excludes it
Swatch Opens AutoCAD’s own colour dialog for that layer

Shift-select a run of rows (a filtered search result, for instance), and one click applies to all of them, in a single transaction with one regen.

The rule for what “all of them” become is the one the native Layer Manager uses: the clicked row’s resulting state is the target the rest are set to. Click a lit bulb in a mixed selection and they all turn off, rather than each flipping in isolation.

Two details that keep a batch usable:

  • Clicking a state button never changes which rows are selected, so the batch survives the toggle and you can keep going.
  • If a clicked row isn’t part of the current multi-selection, the click acts on just that row.

Two edits are refused by AutoCAD itself, and Quick Layer skips them up front with a plain note at the command line rather than an error, matching what the native Layer Manager does:

  • Freezing the current layer.
  • Making Defpoints plottable.

More generally, every state change is read back from the drawing after it’s applied. If AutoCAD rejects an edit, that row’s icon stays as it was instead of showing a state the layer isn’t actually in.