Understanding Layer States in AutoCAD for Electrical Plans

Now we can begin to work on the Electrical Plan view. Earlier in the course, we made the Foundation and Roof Layers, but we left out the Electrical Layer—and this was done so that I could show this as an example.

You do not need to follow along with this portion of the video—please just watch, and then we'll join back together later on. When we work with Layer States, there's a very important checkbox that you should pay attention to. I'm going to go to my Layer State Manager, and you can see here under Restore Options that "Turn Off Layers Not Found in Layer State" is currently checked on.

This is the setting that we would prefer when working, but for this example, I'm going to uncheck it and see what happens when I add a new Layer. Now in this case, I'll go to Layer Properties and make my new Layer—again, keep watching—E-POWR. We're going to make this a color of 30, and I'll make it my current Layer. Now I'm not going to draw the electrical geometry quite yet, but for this example, I'll put a circle off to the side so that we can see that this represents our electrical geometry.

Now when I go to my Layer States—specifically Floor Plan, Foundation Plan, and Roof Plan—you can see that my electrical geometry has stayed on the entire time. This is because the Layer did not exist when we established our Layer States. In fact, after clicking each one of these options, you can see that "Unsaved Layer State" is still in the drop-down.

That is because AutoCAD realizes that there is an unreconciled Layer in our drawing—it has not existed before in any of the Layer States. So what does this checkbox do? "Turn Off Layers Not Found in Layer State."

I'll check it on. This means that whenever we import or create new Layers, if that Layer was not originally found in the Layer State, it will not be added to the Layer State either. So I'll hit Close.

Let me quickly delete this Layer and let's check our Layer States. We can see that I'm now in the Roof Plan, and it recognizes it as such. I'll go to Manage.

When I go to Edit, remember there's a list of Layers here. Okay, let's do this together. Create the Layer—Layer Properties → New Layer → E-POWR.

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That's for electrical power. This is going to be a color of 30. I'll hit OK, and I'm going to leave it at that.

I just want to see the Layer in my drawing. Now, when I go to Manage Layer States, let's select the Floor Plan Layer State and click Edit. Here, we do not see E-POWR.

It should be right here. Down at the bottom, I see two buttons: Add Layer to Layer State and Remove Layer from Layer State. If I hit the Add Layer to Layer State button, we can see E-POWR exists.

Now, if we don’t want to show it in the Layer State at all, it just won’t be on. It'll be totally invisible to the Layer State. Of course, let me Cancel out twice and Close.

If I choose the Layer State "Floor Plan, " it just doesn’t change how E-POWR works—it leaves it off or turns it off, but it's still in our drawing. If I wanted to add a new Layer and then include it in the Layer State, I would have to go back to my Layer States Manager, Edit my Layer State, and add Layers to that Layer State.

For now, however, we can see that we've added E-POWR, and because it has not been added to any of our Layer States, it will not be turned on in any of those views. That’s exactly what we want anyway, so we can leave it like that. Now, however, we want to set up the Layers to look like the Electrical Plan Layer State.

Let's go to Layer Properties. This might be easier if we grab all Layers and turn them off. It'll give us a warning saying we're turning off Layer 0.

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That’s okay—we’ll turn it back on in a second. Layer 0 is on.

We can see that Doors are on and Windows are on. A-Glaze—this is important because it helps us put our switches next to doors on the swing side (not the hinge side), and potentially avoid windows with our outlets—especially in kitchens.

In our case, we don’t have windows in the kitchen, but it’s good practice just in case. Additionally, we’ll turn on A-Fixed and, of course, A-Wall. Finally, A-Text and E-POWR need to be turned on, and now we can see our Floor Plan as it would appear in the Electrical Plan Layer State.

Of course, there’s no electrical drawing in this file yet, but E-POWR is on. One more we forgot is A-No-Plot. Okay, let’s make a new Layer State.

I’ll go to my Layers drop-down and click New Layer State. This is going to be called "Electrical Plan." I’ll hit OK, and now you can see we can switch back and forth between Floor Plan, Foundation Plan, Roof Plan, and Electrical Plan.

Let’s Control+S to save, and in the next video, we will look at using libraries in our Blocks dialog box. See you there.