Locked Layers

[Anonymous]

G'Day,

I'm having an issue with layers staying locked. All of my layers were suddenly locked, so I unlocked all the ones that I work with. They are showing unlocked in the layer properties, but they are still acting locked. I can't modify any of these objects in anyway, but I can't figure out how to reverse it.

Any new objects I make are instantly locked as well, even thought they are on what should be an unlocked layer.

Please help me with my crazy layers!

[braudpat]

Hello

Welcome to the Autodesk/AutoCAD Forums !

Very strange !?

Q1) Of course your ZERO layer is always Thawed, On & Unlocked ?

Q2) If you insert your special DWG into a blank drawng (with the right Units) on Layer ZERO at 0,0

Then Explode then Purge ... Always the problem ?

Q3) Which ACAD LT ?  & with which Service Pack ?? 

[gccdesign · Accepted solution]

What method are you using to lock and unlock?

I have had issues in the past where the isolate button would lock everything, then the un-isolate button would not "un-isolate". I'm not sure, but I think it happened when I clicked on isolate again by mistake or something,

Anyway, it was easy for me to fix. I went into layer manager and selected one layer. Then ctrl>A to select all layers. Then clicked on the lock column to unlock them all. It takes a second or so if there are a lot of layers.

GChapp

[Anonymous]

I had tried doing this a few times, but went in and tried again, and I figured out that even when I thought I was selecting all layers it was only the layers that were visible that were selected. I had to keep scrolling down and repeating until all layers actually were selected. - which I also thought I had tried early - BUT it worked!

Thanks the the suggestion 🙂

[gccdesign]

If you use layer settings like visible and invisible layers a lot in a drawing, you might find it useful to look into the "Layers States Manager". It's a button accessible from the Layer Properties Manager.

As an example, I sometimes use layer states like "New" and "Demo" and "All On" so that I can flip between layer states that I have named to have a demo plan, a new construction plan, etc. You can use these same saved layer states in layouts.

Say in Model Space you can set up a set of layers to be visible or not, various settings. If that is a setup you would use a lot, then you can create a saved "Layer State" and name it. Then you can create another layer state called "Visible" or something that has all layers on.

This way you can restore the "all on" one, make changes, and then restore the prior layer state with some not visible. It will remember the states of visible or not, locked or not, whatever. You don't have to go through and individually reset all the states again.

And you can use the same Ctrl>A method to turn all layers visible, unlock what you need to, then restore a named layer state that you were working in without having to individually set the layers back again to where you had them.

GChapp