working on multiple versions of a drawing

[justynak479969]

Hello Lovely people,

I work in a planning company and i use illutsrtaor daily. Lately the type of drawings I've been doing have shifted towards creating one "master" drawing and switching layers on and off to show different things that are of interest. 

For example, one drawing concentrates on planting so i show the base of an arial with existing planting highlighted and existing walking routes, a different drawing could cover only proposed planing, and another drawing would show green infrastructure with existing proposed plantings and walking routes.

There are currently 26 layers with 3-12 sublayers each. The problem is staying on track with which layers are on or off on which drawing. I tried categorising them (hence my layers and sublayers) but some drawings require some of the sublayers off and some on, and it's generally one massive mess. 

I use autoCAD as well and i was looking for a solution where I could have a sort of page layout which would have their designated layers on. or anything in that sort of direction. Could you help, please? 

[Myra Ferguson · Accepted solution]

You can use Views, but it only works on top-level layers. So if you have sublayers, you could first Release them to Layers by going to the Layers panel menu and selecting Release to Layers (Sequence) and then rearrange as needed. Then make a set of layers visible and turn off the visibility of the other layers. Go to View > New View... and give the view a name. Illustrator will save the custom view at the bottom of the View menu. You can also go to Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts..., and under the Menu Commands, twirl open View where you can set keyboard shortcuts to switch between views.

[justynak479969]

that is really good idea! thank you, not exacly what i had in mind but I can see this being very useful! i have already set up a few views based on what each finished drawing should be and it works!! Thank you so much!! 

[Kurt Gold]

This is a good task for (Layer) Visibility variables which can be set up in the Variables palette.