Expert: Bill DeShawn - 7/20/2006

Question
Good day, is there a easier way of creating multiple new layers having the same properties as its source. Like layer "a" will have the same properties as layer "a1", layer "b" as layer "b1", and so forth. Because i will need to create 23layers of "a", 23layers of "b". doing it one at time would take us a very long time. Any help will be much appreciated.

Answer
Marc:
In the _layer properties dialog of AutoCAD there is the ability to click on a layer to highlight it and then if you click on NEW it will create a new layer with the same properties.  However, it will not know what to name the layer.  So, layer creation and copying won't be a problem but layer naming will.  A LISP routin can be created however to change layer names that start with "Layer" to "a" or to "b".  When you create a new laye with the layer properties dialog, it creates layers with names like Layer1, Layer2, Layer3, etc.  A LISP routine specifically designed for this can change the layer name spelling by looking for "Layer" and changing it to "a".  However, if you never have to do this again, it might be better just to manually go through and rename the layers in the Dialog box, because it would take a while to create the routine and test it.

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Bill DeShawn
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