Just as it is available in other design applications, layers give a lot of alternatives to the design process. We describe how to use layers in Solidworks drawings in this guide. The visibility, line color, thickness, and type of any of your annotations are often controlled by layers. They reduce a great deal of the users’ effort in finishing a portion of the designs while using Solidworks as a design software choice. Layers may be used in a variety of ways, and users can always edit them to create custom effects for their projects.

Additionally, layers may be utilized to import or export .dwgs/.dxfs files. All of the custom layers used in Solidworks or any 2D program are visible when importing a .dwg.

How to Use Layers in Solidworks Drawings

With several features and customizable attributes, the Solidworks layer toolbar is helpful for creating designs. A list of the drawing’s layers may be found on the Layer toolbar, along with the Layer Properties tool. To open the Layers dialog box, click the Layer Properties tool. Set the Color, Style, and Thickness properties of the lines in each layer by creating new layers

In Solidworks, layers are capable of a lot. The CommandManager is useful when using Solidworks for a variety of tasks, and it may also be used to access a few Solidworks Layer settings in this situation. The Layers toolbar will enable the user to access and utilize in various ways if you right-click your CommandManager and choose the Layers option from the menu that appears. Check the bottom left-hand corner of the screen if you can’t find this on your computer screen.

There are three options available to you by default in the settings.

The “Per Standard” is essentially a document property reference. The system choices are mentioned under the “None” option, which is quite generic. The “Format,” which includes everything on the sheet format, comes last.

Using the Layer’s Menu

In Solidworks, layers can be used to construct certain sorts of annotations, especially if you are creating in a way that calls for extremely thorough work for all parts and portions of the marked-out design. Take into account a sample of the making of center marks.

You only need to click the Layers button to bring up the Layers menu in order to create this layout.

Creating New Layers in Solidworks Drawings

To create a new layer and give it a name, first of all, click the “New” button. The elements on this layer have various customization choices, allowing you to create the unique layout or design you want. The options for the elements that are available include color, style, and thickness. Layers may also be turned on and off to display only the ones you wish to see. This will help you to keep your design clean and check layers only when you need to. Let’s say we want to alter the color to red for this case. When completed, click OK to accept this latest layer.

It is easy to notice that the newly generated layer is the active layer in the bottom left corner of your Solidworks screen. This implies that every new annotation you add to this page after creating a new layer will be on that layer.

Change the Layer option back to “None” if this is not what you planned. Right-click an annotation that you intend and choose “Change Layer” to add it to a layer.

After you have done this, you may pick the layer to which you want it to be transferred using the drop-down menu that will show on the screen.

The center markings in this illustration are now red; this is to match the layer they are on.

In case you can’t achieve the changing of the annotation to another layer as described in the example, if it is a simple annotation that you can make, just remove the annotation from the unintended layer, and then you can apply it correctly to the layer of your choice. Otherwise, you can try the previous step as exactly discussed.

Actually, the process of achieving this seems a bit tedious and manual for some users. Still, if you want a perfectly unique custom design, the manual addition of annotations and other effects and styles is advised. The “per standard” option is another useful choice that is a little more automatic and will ease the stress of going through designs over or more than needed; after the initial setup of this process, you’ll never have to do it again in your design.

There is a list of annotation kinds, and you may attach each tab’s dimension type to the appropriate layer as you follow the process. 

Once you’ve done that, save the document as a template so you may use it for future Solidworks designs. You should be aware that how quickly and effectively you can complete your Solidworks design depends greatly on how reuseable your design and design components are. The value of creating reusable designs cannot be overstated even at the professional level.

Therefore, be careful and make sure to keep most of the document templates you have generated or used in the past and believe are appropriate for reuse.

To refer to these settings once again, you must change the current layer to “Per Standard” in the bottom left corner.

Bottom-Line

Solidworks layers are really useful in that when you design new entities like annotations or, say, assembly components on a layer, you can easily assign or modify properties like the visibility of the entities and the line characteristics like the line color and style. As a novice or a professional Solidworks user, good knowledge of how to use layers in Solidworks drawings will help you achieve more detailed designs based on the specific characteristics you can assign to components.

The reusability of the document templates makes the use of layers more desirable since this helps users save a lot of time and become more efficient in completing their drawings.