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OzzyMarz
Participant
December 15, 2019
Question

Auto-Sorting Layers/Sub-Layers in Illustrator (Suggestion)

  • December 15, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 2095 views

If you're a frequent user of Illustrator or any other software that uses layers so you can sort your work. Then you most probably have had to of relocated a lot of Layers to whatever order they should be in. That could become tedious and time consuming, the more you do this, the more it gets frustrating.

 

To save value time, I suggest that there be an option to 'Auto-Sort'; obviously this will not be perfect, but if it would sort all Unlocked Layers to bring the smallest Layers to the front and the bigger the further back it goes.

 

This is so if you've worked on a bunch of components separately and now that they're visible they are clustered behind a load of Layers. Just to make is so much more easier to see where you're planting all the Layers when you're moving them.

 

I'd think since Text is usually at the front of anything that is should be prioritised and bring to the front regardless of the size.

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

Mylenium
Legend
December 15, 2019

I don't think this will work on any level. Too many scenarios where it won't do anything and/ or break the structure of the document like toying around with transparencies and blending modes, blends and so on. AI's actual rendering of objects doesn't operate independently from its internal structure. and since you speak of unlocked layers, I can't even see how it adds any efficiency. You know, if you have to go in and lock objects to exclude them from the sorting you might just as well get into sorting and grouping them directly. I've done similar stuff in my career as a 3D artist sifting literally through CAD data with millions of elements and there is basically never a good way to automate any of this and you still have to go in manually and select stuff. That's why I'm highly skeptical here.

 

Mylenium

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 15, 2019

Please report feature requests to http://illustrator.uservoice.com

Post the URL of your request here if you want to collect votes.