I've struggled with layers for a while having made edits to one object on a layer only to find my default layer was another layer. It was really confusing until I twigged.
Scenes seemed to hold promise. I could create a scene that only displayed the layer I wanted to tinker with. What is annoying though is that the default layer is not saved along with a scene. This means that if I'm currently working on the Ground Floor layer, say, and I switch to the scene that only shows the First Floor layer then both ground floor detail AND first floor detail are displayed until I manually change my default layer to First Floor and then hide the ground floor in the Layers dialogue.
Surely Scenes should embed your default layer or at least have an option to save it if you want to.
... or have I missed the point entirely?
Peter