The change in AutoCAD 2008 to the way layer states restore in model space and paper space.
Thanks to Autodesk developer and former AutoCAD Express Tools team developer Tom Stoeckel. I have known Tom for years and before Autodesk he even had his own AutoCAD Layer tools he developed for people. Tom is one of the most knowledgeable people on AutoCAD and a trusted person to go to for the straight no bones about it answer. Tom is also very active on his own time reading and responding to customers in discussion forums and events like Autodesk University. It is always a great benefit to have people like Tom on your team that go the extra effort and care sincerely about what they do.
I think users can get the same behavior by restoring the layer state and then going to the necessary layout tab and restoring it again. Model space and paper space (including layouts) are now treated independently of each other with respect to layer states.
The change to the way layer states restore in model space and paper space.
Here is Tom's response posted to the newsgroup last March:
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Let me explain some changes that happened in 2008.
The on/off and freeze/thaw settings for a layer only really apply in model space. Layers in a viewport are really just visible or not visible - you see them or you don't - and whether or not a given layer is visible in a viewport is ultimately going to be handled by the vpfreeze settings in THAT viewport and the global visibility settings from model space. When restoring a layer state in a viewport we don't manipulate the model space on/off and freeze/thaw layer settings UNLESS it is necessary to make a layer visible in the viewport.
So it works like this:
- If a layer is on and thawed in model space and should be visible in the viewport, we vpthaw it in the viewport. No MS changes.
- If a layer should not be visible in the viewport, we vpfreeze it in that viewport. No MS changes.
- If a layer is off and/or frozen in model space and should be visible in the viewport, we make whatever MS changes are necessary so it will be visible and then vpthaw it in the viewport.
While in PS, the MS on/off & freeze/thaw controls in the dialog are disabled because we aren't manipulating those settings unless necessary to give the expected results in a viewport. Whether or not a layer state restores the visibility of the layer in a viewport is now controlled by the "Visibility in Current VP" option.
Basically, we've made a distinction between restoring in PS and restoring in MS and we treat them like the two different environments they are. This change was necessary to fix a legacy problem with restoring layer states in PS. Prior to AutoCAD 2008 you could not restore multiple layer states to multiple viewports without potentially jacking up the visibility of previous viewports to which you had just restored. So if you have a layout with 4 viewports and you needed to restore a different layer state in each viewport, you ran a very high risk that every subsequent layer state restore, after the first one, would affect the look of the viewports prior to it. This happened because we were restoring the MS on/off & freeze/thaw settings while in PS viewports and since those settings are global visibility changes, you would have layers that were visible in viewport 1 being globally turned off by the restore to viewport 3. Very frustrating. We avoid that now by NOT restoring the model space visibility settings while in paper space UNLESS it is necessary to make a layer visible in a viewport. The truth is these ARE two different work environments (MS vs PS) and the layer changes you make in one have always potentially affected how it looks in the other.
<snip>
The bottom line is that some users have become accustomed to having LMAN manage their layout layers as an unintentional by-product. Now that we have drawn a clear line between Paperspace (layout) and Modelspace layer management, this isn’t just accidentally happening anymore. If this is a huge issue, we can probably fix it somehow but I would have to investigate a fix that works for them and doesn’t totally muck up the new AutoCAD 2008 changes we made.
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