The popup and its search

MDQUICKLAYER opens a small, borderless window at the cursor with the search box focused, ready to type into.

1. 1Type a few letters of the layer name.
2. 2Narrows the list to all, used, or xref layers.
3. 3The best match is highlighted: Enter makes it current.

Search by any part of the name

You don’t have to type a layer name from the start, or in one piece. The letters you type can come from anywhere in the name, in order, with gaps allowed. The search then ranks what it finds.

A match scores higher when it has:

• longer runs of consecutive characters,
• letters landing at word boundaries: the start of the name, or just after a -, _ or space,
• an earlier start in the name,
• a tighter span between the first and last matched character.

Ties break toward the shorter layer name. So in a drawing full of ELEC-PANEL-01, ELEC-PANEL-02, ELEC-PLAN, typing elpnl puts the panel layers at the top without you spelling any of it out.

Leave the box empty and every layer in scope is listed, so the popup doubles as a browser.

Keyboard

Key	What it does
Type	Filters and re-ranks live
↑ / ↓	Move the highlight, scrolling to keep it in view
Enter	Make the highlighted layer current, and close
Esc	Cancel; nothing changes
Double-click a layer name	Same as Enter

Clicking outside the popup also cancels it.

Scope: narrowing before you search

The button beside the search box cycles a pre-filter that decides which layers the search runs against at all:

Scope	The list contains
All	Every layer in the drawing
Used	Only the drawing’s own layers that actually have objects on them, xref layers excluded
Xref	Only xref-dependent layers

Used and Xref are kept disjoint, so cycling gives you three genuinely different lists. Your choice is remembered across popups and across AutoCAD^® sessions.

Note

The first time you pick Used, Quick Layer sweeps the drawing (model space, every layout, and every block definition) to find out which layers are populated. That result is cached, so only the first switch costs anything.

With objects already selected

MDQUICKLAYER reads the pick-first selection as it opens. When there is one:

• The layers those objects sit on are pinned in a “Selected layers” section at the top, divided from the rest of the list.
• The top pinned row starts highlighted, so pressing Enter straight away makes the selection’s own layer current: the LAYMCUR flow, in two keystrokes.
• Typing filters both sections alike.

Committing a layer can also reassign the selected objects to it, mirroring native LAYCUR. Whether that happens is up to the Reassign selection setting: Prompt asks each time, Always does it silently, Never changes only the current layer. Set it with MDQUICKLAYERSETTINGS.

With nothing selected, the pinned section simply isn’t there.