Using Layers to Organize Your Drawing - AutoCAD 2011 and AutoCAD LT 2011: No Experience Required - page 246

Minor Discipline Designator [NNNN] Sometimes you may need to classify your
layers further. In the case of walls you may have a layer for the centerline of
your wall (A-WALL-CNTR), another for fire-rated walls (A-WALL-FIRE), and
yet another for partial or half-walls (A-WALL-PRHT). Like the major designa-
tors, all Minor Discipline Designators should be four characters. Minor codes,
unlike major designators, can be stacked together to achieve the necessary level
of granularity. For instance, you might name the partial wall centerline layer
A-WALL-PRHT-CNTR.
With the U.S. National CAD Standard growing in popularity, chances are you'll
have to work with drawings using its prescribed framework at some point once you
begin working on your own designs. You now have a good understanding of what
the U.S. National CAD Standards are and, more importantly, how to “decode” NCS
layer names when you encounter them. More information on the U.S. National
CAD Standard can be found at www.nationalcadstandard.org .
Knowing every detail about NCS is not necessary to complete the exercises in
this topic. As in the example you're about to complete for working with layers,
I'll provide all the information you need to create layers inside the framework
outlined above. To begin creating new layers, take the following steps:
1. Open AutoCAD and then open 05A-FPLAY4.dwg (both imperial and
metric versions are included in the Chapter 6 data folder). Make sure
the Home tab is active and the Layers panel is in the Ribbon, cen-
tered just above the drawing area on your screen.
2. Expand the panel and you will see, as shown in Figure 6.4, that it
contains several buttons, two drop-down lists, and a slider bar for
controlling layers.
FiGuRE 6.4 The expanded Layers panel
Several panels to the right is the Properties panel (see Figure 6.5),
with four drop-down lists for controlling linetypes, colors, transpar-
ency, and other layer and object properties. Once again, best practices
discourage changing the properties of individual objects to anything
other than By Layer/By Block unless absolutely necessary.