DRAWORDER by layer

James Maeding

@Anthony Apostolaros said:

@James Maeding said:
.... You cannot tell autocad "this layer is always on top".

Maybe I'm even more confused than I thought. Isn't that what the DrawOrderByLayer command does?
Not really "always" as in VectorWorks and Photoshop, but immediately after each time you run the command.
So if I'm set up to run the command automatically at the right times it has the same effect.

I say acad and bcad on and off, just habit. Both act the same...
What I mean is you can tell bcad "this entity goes to top", but you cannot tell it "this layer goes to top".
Does that matter? Maybe.
The implication is bcad does not control draw order using the layer. Each entitiy has its own order in the big list.
So you might tweak the lisp to set only text in a layer to the top. Other progs cannot do that, its by layer and that is it.
Bcad is per entity, which may help or be irrelevent depending on the situation.

You origin object thing is great. The WTIT would then be useful to replace ctrl-c and v, as those use the windows clipboard.
The WTIT uses a file so it sticks forever til you overwrite with another WT command.
thx

SteveDaniels

@James, the quote you have with my name on it is actually from Anthony.

James Maeding

hmm, getting lost now myself @SteveDaniels
The way old style newsgroups, called NNTP format, were way better than these web formats.
You could easily track a thread with many branches. Oh, well.

James Maeding

@Anthony Apostolaros said:

@James Maeding said:
.... You cannot tell autocad "this layer is always on top".

Maybe I'm even more confused than I thought. Isn't that what the DrawOrderByLayer command does?
Not really "always" as in VectorWorks and Photoshop, but immediately after each time you run the command.
So if I'm set up to run the command automatically at the right times it has the same effect.

I posted this last night but didn't work? Trying again...

I'm being very specific so that people realize layers do not have any connection to draw order.
You are correct that the lisp here makes it look like they somehow do, but they don't.
For purposes here, I could leave that unsaid and save confusion, but I think it needs to be understood.
Let's say the lisp failed on some entities. Understanding that draworder per entity would make you look at individual entities.
You would ask "is this an issue with specific entity types, or the whole layer?"
Stuff like that requires specific understanding of what property is stored by what.
Sorry to pull you down the rabbit hole further than really needed and get mud on things.

John TeSelle

Hans De Backer said:

Steve,

in the very distant past we probably have developed a utility that is of interest to you. I was actually surprised to see it survived as a command in current BricsCAD releases. The name of the command comes remarkably close to the title of this post, in fact, verbatim... DRAWORDERBYLAYER.

In short:

using a tool like e.g. Notepad, the user creates a list of layer names as a text file with extension '.lst', e.g. 'MyList.lst'

When running DRAWORDERBYLAYER, the draworder of entities residing on these layers will be set according to the order of the layer names in the list.

The command allows to choose which list to apply, so you could e.g. have 'MyPreferredOrder.lst', 'MyReversedOrder.lst', 'MyAlternativeOrder.lst', etc.

See: https://help.bricsys.com/hc/en-us/articles/360006661553-DrawOrderByLayer

I just discovered this command and find it quite useful. Please let it survive into future releases!