Layer Properties Manager, Layer Name, sort order

[CharlieTangoPapa]

First let me say I have already tried MAXSORT and it does not work for my issue.

In my Layer Properties Manager, both on the ribbon pull down and in the full window, I can't get the layers to sort by Name (alphabetically). We have recently migrated to NCS layer naming so I have V-, VG- and VN- layers, and only have 169 layers in my current drawing. Right now they are in this order V-, VG-, V-, VN-, V-, VN-, V-, in various numbers.

Any ideas? Do they get locked in order somehow upon creation? Some layers are just lines, some are created by descriptor keys, but even at that all the layers created by descriptor keys are not all together.

On another note, I have brought up the AutoCAD "Layers" toolbar, and the "Layer Control" pulldown has all my layers listed in alphabetical order!

Hmmm

[Jay_B]

Try going to Layer Manager>Settings (wrench on upper right of Layman)>verify "Apply layer filter to layer toolbar" is checked.

[tcorey]

Care to post a drawing?

[CharlieTangoPapa]

The "wrench" idea had no affect.

Attached is a drawing I was working on today.

[Jay_B]

Charlie,

From what I can tell I think you may have found a bug in the sorting of the Layer Manager.

I've never noticed this but in our dwt's we have C-, G- or V- as prefixes which doesn't seem to be a sorting problem.

To test it out I created new drawings with OOTB Acad.dwt for 2014 & Acadiso.dwt for 2012 and created layer names similar to those in your dwt where there may be 2 characters prefixing the first dash.

Maxsort was set to 32,767 for this test.

In 2012 it seems to sort you're after.

In 2014 not so much, it seems to ignore that first dash.

 Windows Explorer seems to sort more like 2014 though?

[Jay_B · Accepted solution]

Apparently this was a new feature introduced in 2014 AutoCad - Natural Sort Order of Layer names.

Your best bet may be to stick with the same number of characters before the dash if possible.

One of those love it or hate it changes that makes more sense in some numeric sort instances but not

necessarily for letter layer name sorting as in your case.

[CharlieTangoPapa]

Jay_B,

Thanks for your help on this, it was driving me nuts. Guess I'll be reworking our standards a bit.

Not sure how this is supposed to work with the National CAD Standards Level 2 Discipline Designators though.

[Jay_B]

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@CharlieTangoPapa wrote:

Not sure how this is supposed to work with the National CAD Standards Level 2 Discipline Designators though.

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One thing you can do is leave AUTODESK some Feedback on this new feature Here.

[slant]

Ok, I'm using AutoCAD Civil 3D 2014.

Yesterday i wasn't having this issue, today i am. My layer pull-down sorts properly, but when i open layer manager, the sort ignores the dashes in the layer name. So for example:

Correct Sort:                                                        Actual Sort:

E-WAT-EDGE                                                       E-WAT-EDGE

E-ZONE                                                                EX-ELECT

EX-ELECT                                                             EX-GAS

EX-GAS                                                                E-ZONE

In this example, it's easy to ignore, but in other places in my sort, the layers have been thrown much farther down the list and are difficult to find. I saw that you can fix this in 2015 by changing the "sortorder" variable to "0", but that command isn't available in 2014. This is certainly not going to cripple my productivity, but it is constantly annoying. Has there been any progress finding a solution to this other than "work around it"?

[egrisdale]

I just had this same problem occur after several years of not running into it and had forgotten how to fix it; and thus began the quest to relocate the solution. I found it on another form. Try using command "MAXSORT". Set to like "5000". 5000 being the number of layers the program will sort in order.