2008

Always Arrange Sets Schematic View to always arrange all entities based on
the chosen arrangement preference. Displays a pop-up warning before doing
so. Choosing this activates the toolbar button.
Using Layers to Organize a Scene
Layers are like transparent overlays on which you organize and group different
kinds of scene information. The objects you create have common properties
including color, renderability, and display. An object can assume these
properties from the layer on which you create it. Using layers makes it easier
to manage the information in your scenes. Layers are used primarily to control
the visibility of objects in your scene, however they also controls the color of
objects' wireframe and the
frozen on page 152 and hidden state of objects,
as well as their radiosity properties.
For example, you might want to set up a layer that will contain detailed,
custom furniture. To do this, you create a layer and set Viewport Display to
Bounding Box. Then you set the object's display properties to ByLayer (in the
Object Properties dialog on page 245 ). This will keep the viewport display
quick. Then, whenever you want to import new furniture, switch to this layer.
You don't need to set up your viewport display every time you import new
furniture. Also, if you don't want to render the furniture, you can turn off that
layer's Renderable property.
NOTE When you link an AutoCAD file into 3ds Max, any layers that are frozen
(and all objects that reside on these layers) are not imported.
NOTE Objects can be hidden and frozen on a per-object basis; however, an object
residing on a hidden or frozen layer will always adopt the hide/freeze state of its
layer.
TIP If you set lights' render control to ByLayer (in the General panel of the
Preferences dialog), you can use the Render column in the Layer Manager to
quickly turn lights on or off in your scene.
7224 | Chapter 21 Managing Scenes and Projects