LayerManager

The LayerManager command opens a table listing every layer in the drawing, with its Freeze, Lock, Plot, Color, Lineweight, and Linetype settings editable directly in the row. It’s the central place to add layers, delete unused ones, and adjust how existing ones behave — the other layer commands (LayerMakeCurrent, LayerMatch, LayerIsolate, LayerUnfreezeAll) each do one focused thing without opening it.

Opening the Layer Manager

Type LayerManager in the terminal, or
Click the Layer Manager button in the layer panel.

The dialog opens as a floating panel; nothing needs to be selected first.

The layer table

Column	What it controls
Name	The layer’s name, shown read-only in the table (set once, at creation)
Freeze	Hides the layer’s entities and excludes them from selection until unfrozen
Lock	Prevents entities on the layer from being edited, without hiding them
Plot	Whether the layer’s entities are included when printing or exporting to PDF
Color	The layer’s ACI color — click the swatch to open the color picker
Lineweight	The layer’s line thickness — click the chip to open the lineweight picker
Linetype	The layer’s dash pattern — click the chip to open the linetype picker
✕	Deletes the layer, when nothing is using it — see Deleting a layer

Toggling Freeze, Lock, or Plot takes effect immediately — there’s no separate save step. Entities set to ByLayer for color, lineweight, or linetype (the default) pick up whatever you set here; entities with an explicit override of their own are unaffected.

Adding a layer

Click + Add Layer at the bottom of the table.
Type a name and press Enter to confirm, or Escape to cancel.

Layer names may contain letters, numbers, spaces, and _, -, $. A name that’s empty, already in use, or contains any other character is rejected with an inline error, and the row stays open for another try.

New layers start unfrozen, unlocked, plottable, with color 7 (white/black), lineweight Default, and linetype Continuous — the same defaults Import assigns to layer 0 in a blank drawing.

Deleting a layer

Each row ends with a ✕ button that removes the layer from the drawing. Deletion is immediate — there is no confirmation step — but it is only offered for layers nothing depends on:

Situation	Button state
Layer is empty	Enabled — Delete layer
Layer is assigned to at least one entity	Disabled — Cannot delete: assigned to at least one entity
Layer `0`	No button at all

“In use” spans the whole drawing, not just what you’re looking at. An entity sitting on a layout (paper space) counts exactly as much as one in model space, so a layer can look empty on screen and still refuse to delete. Frozen layers are no different: freezing hides entities but doesn’t unassign them, so a frozen layer holding entities stays undeletable.

Layer 0 can never be deleted. It’s the fallback every drawing is guaranteed to have, so the button isn’t rendered for it at all rather than being shown disabled.

”…is now in use and can’t be deleted”

Occasionally the ✕ looks available but the click is refused with a banner at the top of the panel:

"WALLS" is now in use and can't be deleted

This isn’t a contradiction. Working out which layers are in use means walking every entity in the drawing, so the result is cached and only rebuilt when the entity count changes — cheap at hundreds of entities, not at hundreds of thousands. Moving an existing entity onto a layer doesn’t change the count, so the row’s disabled state can be a moment out of date. Clicking re-checks from scratch before deleting anything, which is why the refusal happens at click time rather than the layer disappearing while something still references it.

Dismiss the banner with its own ✕. The layer is untouched.

What you can’t do here

There’s no indicator in the table for which layer is current; that’s set by picking from the layer panel’s dropdown or by LayerMakeCurrent, not from this dialog. Layer names are also fixed at creation — a layer can be deleted and recreated, but not renamed.

Keyboard reference

Key	Action
`Enter`	Confirm a new layer’s name (while adding)
`Escape`	Cancel adding a layer, or close the dialog

Command	What it does
LayerMakeCurrent	Set the current layer to match a clicked entity’s layer
LayerMatch	Reassign selected entities to match the layer of a source entity
LayerIsolate	Freeze all layers except those of the selected entities
LayerUnfreezeAll	Unfreeze all layers in one step