Using Layers to Organize Your Drawing - AutoCAD 2011 and AutoCAD LT 2011: No Experience Required - page 276

s e l e C t I n g o B j e C t s In y o U r d r a W I n g (Continued)

If the geometry of your drawing makes forming a crossing or regular selec-
tion window difficult because of the need to move from right to left (cross-
ing) or from left to right (regular), you can force one or the other by entering
C ↵ or W ↵ , respectively, but only if a command is running.
Removing objects from a Selection Set At some point, you'll find
it more efficient to select more objects than you want and then remove the
unwanted ones. You can do this in three ways:
To remove a couple of objects, hold down the Shift key and pick the

objects.
To remove objects from the selection set, hold down the Shift key and

use one of the selection window types.
If a command is running, enter

R↵ , and then use the Selection tools
(Picking, Windows, and so on) without the Shift key to remove objects
from the selection set.
If you are in a command and need to add objects back to the selection set
after removing some, enter A↵ . This puts you back into selection mode, and
you can continue adding objects to the set.

turning off and Freezing Layers
You can make layers invisible either by turning them off or by freezing them. When a
layer is turned off or frozen, the objects on that layer are invisible. These two proce-
dures operate in almost the same way and perform about the same function, with one
significant difference: objects on frozen layers cannot be selected with the All option,
while objects on layers that are off can be selected. For example, if you enter E ↵
A ↵↵ to erase all objects, all the visible and invisible objects on the layers turned off
are deleted, while the objects on frozen layers remain in the drawing but are still
invisible. Here is a good rule to follow: If you want a layer to be invisible for only a
short time, turn it off; if you prefer that it be invisible semipermanently, freeze it.
For the task at hand, you'll turn off all layers except for the A-WALL and
A-DOOR layers to reveal a more simplified look at your floor plan. Afterward,
you'll learn how to restore the visibility of all layers in your drawing at once.

1. Make sure 06A-FPLAY4.dwg is open.

2. Click the Layer Properties button on the Layers panel to open the Layer
Properties Manager dialog box, or expand the palette if it is still collapsed
on your screen.

3. Click the Settings button in the upper-right corner of the Layer
Properties Manager palette.