Autodesk 12812-051462-9011 User Guide 3 - Page 2183

Hierarchy Mode Sets Schematic View to display entities as a hierarchy instead of reference graph. Children appear indented below the parent. Switching between Hierarchy and Reference mode is nondestructive. 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 212 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 305). 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. 7438 | Chapter 23 Managing Scenes and Projects