I am very much a newcomer to this field, and am looking at FreeCad for architectural purposes. Specifically for use in renovating my own home.NormandC wrote:Interesting find, fandaL!
It's mostly positive which is good, but one thing made my eyebrow twitch:By "CAD field" he obviously meant "AutoCAD", because that's the CAD system that uses layers (as well as others that copy it).If I have to lodge a complaint at all it’s that there is no layering system included; all display options seem to be controlled by object. Anyone who’s ever worked in the CAD field is going to find that frustrating
For the past 10 years I've used parametric CAD at work and the software only provides layers in the drawing environment - and I hardly ever use this functionality.
My feel from very limited knowledge would be that layers are useful in architecture to allow you to separately view the different services that a building offers. For example you might want to look at structure plus plumbing, or structure plus electrics.
Possibly naively, a layer seems a fairly simple thing - a selection or multiple selection according to given criteria. Contrary to the commenters view I do not see why the criteria should not be say data held against the object. However I guess implementation would get complicated if you made the selections editable. Logical homomorphs might be database reports (non-editable) and views (often editable).
Kind regards
Mouse