@arcad-uk said:
Solid tools are a great step forward, but I am frustrated by the outcome. Why does the process result in groups being renamed & moved to layer 0. It may be a great safety net for tracking changes, but I seem to spend more time moving stuff back onto the right layer and changing the name back again than I would dealing with any other problems which might arise through the process.
What do you think, should S.U. retain the original layer & name of the target when carrying out solid operations?
I saw where several different views and workarounds were opted for. I ,Please excuse the pun "went to the drawing board" and developed about six solids on six layers .
Locking the entity restricts all operations.
1.In the first test I choose the "UNION" of two solids. layer1 and layer2 .The current working layer was zero. I found the completed model had chosen the first model picked as it's layer for home.
2. I tried the difference between two solid models, in this command the first pick has the shape extracted and it stayed in it's home layer ,naturally.
3. I then tried the resultant of the intersection of two models .Here again the first picked mandated the home layer.
4. I found this true on all other operations in the OSCoolean operations. First pick mandates the layer ,current layer mandated any new construction added to that piece.
As an example if you havea machine on layer 4 and added a pipe spool while on current layer 5 . If you pick the pipe spool first for unioning the spool will cause the machine to migrate to current level. If you pick the machine first then the spool will be on the machine layer after union.
From past expierience layering can serve as a great show and tell feature. On a top down presentation. However from a designer point . Creating components and importing them for review is always best . It's quite easy to have a current layer blended by accident into a layer and you not see it for several hours . Long after the edit (undo) command is an option.