Using Layers to Organize Your Drawing - AutoCAD 2011 and AutoCAD LT 2011: No Experience Required - page 295

complete the floor plan by placing windows in the external walls using a group-
ing tool called a block . The rest of this chapter contains a short discussion about
color, linetypes, and lineweights and how they work with layers and objects. We'll
also look at the Action Recorder feature to record and play back repetitive tasks.
Setting Properties of Layers and objects
This section covers a few concepts you should consider when assigning proper-
ties to layers and objects.
Selecting Colors for Layers and objects
First, you must decide whether you prefer a light or dark background color for
the drawing area. This is generally a personal preference, but the lighting in your
work area can be a contributing factor. Bright work areas usually make it difficult
to read monitors easily, and with a dark background color on your screen in a
brightly lit room, you'll often get distracting reflections on the screen. Eyestrain
can result. Darkening your work area will usually minimize these effects. If that's
not possible, you might have to live with a lighter background.
Next, look at the colors in your drawing. If the background of your drawing
area is white, notice which colors are the easiest to read. For most monitors, yel-
low, light gray, and cyan are somewhat faded, while blue, green, red, and magenta
are read easily. If your drawing area background is black, the blue is sometimes
too dark to read easily, but the rest of the colors that you have used so far usually
read well. This is one reason that most users prefer the black or at least a dark
background color.
Assigning a Color or a Linetype to
an object instead of a Layer
You can also assign properties of layers, such as color, linetype, and lineweight,
to objects. For example, think about the A-ROOF layer. It's assigned the Dashed
linetype. A line on the A-ROOF layer can be assigned the Continuous linetype,
even though all other lines on the Roof layer are dashed. The same is true for
color and lineweight. Occasionally, this makes sense, especially for linetypes,
but that is the exception rather than the rule. To make such a change, select the
line, open the Properties palette, and change the linetype from ByLayer to the
linetype of your choice. You can also use the Properties toolbar to make quick
changes to an object's appearance.