Hi all,
I'm trying to do something that I would think would be very simple, but I've walked a couple of videos now and have scoured the forum and have come up empty-handed. How can I change a sublayer to a layer and then have it in the correct order? Here's a screenshot:
I'm trying to get layer 8. Marshland so that it will be under layer 7. Roads but not nested under 7. Roads. I would think that would be really easy to do, but I've spend half an hour so far, fruitlessly dragging it, using Ctrl and Shift and various combinations, but so far I can only do one of two things:
a. Move 8. Marshland to the very top of the list, above 1.
b. Make 8. Marshland a sublayer of 7. Roads.
What am I missing? I hope I don't need to install a script or something like that for what seems like such a basic thing to do. Thanks in advance!
-- Bill
1 Correct answer
I tried to come up with a demo situation equivalent to yours. Here I want to move Layer3 from a sublayer to a main layer below Layer2:
As you said, I can only drag it somewhere away from Layer2, so I drag it to the top for simplicity. At this point, if I try and drag it to the correct position, it just becomes a sublayer of 2 again -- but not of any other layer. So I drag Layer2 out of position, in this example to the bottom:
After that, I can drag Layer3 in between Layer1 and Layer4, then dra
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Hi Doug,
Thanks for the quick reply! Alas, I tried those instructions, but that left me with this, where 7 and 8 are now sublayers of 9:
Any other ideas out there? Thanks!
-- Bill
I tried to come up with a demo situation equivalent to yours. Here I want to move Layer3 from a sublayer to a main layer below Layer2:
As you said, I can only drag it somewhere away from Layer2, so I drag it to the top for simplicity. At this point, if I try and drag it to the correct position, it just becomes a sublayer of 2 again -- but not of any other layer. So I drag Layer2 out of position, in this example to the bottom:
After that, I can drag Layer3 in between Layer1 and Layer4, then drag Layer2 above it. Now I have the correct order:
Ah, thank you, Doug!
I have no idea why that worked, and it didn't work at first, but eventually, I was able to drag everything to the bottom, and then reconstruct the list of layers in order from there:
Ah, I can rest easy now. Thank you!
-- Bill
If the area you want to drag the sublayer to is below an expanded layer, AI will make it a sublayer under the new location. If you collapse the other layer, it can drag it below it.
Expanded Layer:
Collapsed Layer:
Very easy to solve with a basic script:
var active = app.activeDocument.activeLayer,
parent = getParent(active);
function getParent(layer) {
if (layer.parent && /(layer|group)/i.test(layer.parent.typename))
return getParent(layer.parent);
return layer;
}
active.move(app.activeDocument, ElementPlacement.INSIDE);
active.move(parent, ElementPlacement.PLACEBEFORE); // PLACEAFTER if wanting it to be below parentThat way you could use Insert Menu Item within an Action and assign to a hotkey if needed, though looking at the document it'd be far better to parse through all layers and sublayers then separate any with a "\d*\.\s" prefix and automatically sort/order them at the root of the document instead of ever needing to do any manual dragging.
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