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[solved] toggle visibility of groups of layers - feature cancelled

Posted: Sun Jan 07, 2018 9:34 pm
by matita
I have just upgraded to 3.19.2 and discovered that each layer has to be switched visible/invisible individually. This rather defeats the advantage of having a parent layer, so I am going to roll back to an earlier version. Does anybody know which is the latest version I can use which still had the ability to toggle the visibility of each group of layers with one click?

TIA

Re: toggle visibility of groups of layers - feature cancelled

Posted: Sun Jan 07, 2018 10:06 pm
by Husky
Hi TIA - welcome to the QCAD Forum.
matita wrote:I have just upgraded to 3.19.2 and discovered that each layer has to be switched visible/invisible individually. This rather defeats the advantage of having a parent layer, so I am going to roll back to an earlier version. Does anybody know which is the latest version I can use which still had the ability to toggle the visibility of each group of layers with one click?

TIA
Whats about to "Toggle Frozen Status" for the parent layer? The effect should be that what you are looking for ...

Re: toggle visibility of groups of layers - feature cancelled

Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2018 9:36 am
by matita
to "Toggle Frozen Status" for the parent layer?
Not quite. There seems to be a new behaviour, where hiding the parent causes the "eye" icon oof the children to shrink, and re-enabling the parent also switches the children with the small eye to reappear, but there is no way now to switch the whole family on.

Typically, for example, I might hide a number of the sub-layers of the first floor plan to be able to work on the ground floor plan without too much clutter, and without too many spurious points to snap to. Then I switch off all the ground floor and switch the first floor visible to do work there. Now, in the latest version, I have to toggle all the layers individually. I can see that some users might find this behaviour useful, but there should be some way (double clicking the parent "eye" for example) to turn on or off the whole group. Another example of inconsistent UI behaviour resulting from responding to a particular request, I suppose.

Re: toggle visibility of groups of layers - feature cancelled

Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2018 8:00 pm
by Husky
matita wrote:
to "Toggle Frozen Status" for the parent layer?
Not quite. There seems to be a new behaviour, where hiding the parent causes the "eye" icon oof the children to shrink, and re-enabling the parent also switches the children with the small eye to reappear, but there is no way now to switch the whole family on.
Ok, then I have to admit that I haven't understood the issue correct and I can't reproduce that behavior. :oops:

I thought - and still think - that everything is working to your requirement if you use the frozen status instead of the layer status.


Re: toggle visibility of groups of layers - feature cancelled

Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2018 9:16 pm
by matita
Okay, thanks. I will have to investigate that version, if I can discover which it is.

The versions I have (3.19.2 and 3.6.3) have only two columns of action icons beside the layer names, hide/view and lock/unlock.

The youtube video shows 5 columns, something I have never seen.

EDIT: Perhaps they are present in versions of qcad for proprietary OSs?

I have just installed the librecad fork which also has extra actions for each layer (and laid out in a far more readable way like qcad was aeons ago, witht he action icons on the left so they read easily witht the layer-name). In fact it uses screen realestate far better, has clear icons... I would switch to librecad, but it lacks the parent/child layer functions entirely, and has at least one fatal bug (open the help menu and there is no way to close it or continue working! I had to kill the process.) I mention this only because librecad points out some of the ways that qcad has lost focus and convenience.

Re: toggle visibility of groups of layers - feature cancelled

Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2018 10:40 pm
by Husky
matita wrote:The youtube video shows 5 columns, something I have never seen.
Maybe that explains our "misunderstanding". :wink:
Below Application Preferences is the possibility given to make those columns visible/invisible. I work with 3.19.2.
Husky-2018.01.08-01.png
Husky-2018.01.08-01.png (70.62 KiB) Viewed 11673 times

Re: toggle visibility of groups of layers - feature cancelled

Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2018 12:57 pm
by andrew
matita wrote:I have just installed the librecad fork which also has extra actions for each layer (and laid out in a far more readable way like qcad was aeons ago, witht he action icons on the left so they read easily witht the layer-name).
There is a reason for having icons on the right.
matita wrote:I would switch to librecad, but it lacks the parent/child layer functions entirely
And there's your reason right there :)

Icons on the left would mean that all eyes icons would no longer be under each other for hierarchical layers.

There's usually a reason in QCAD for things to be the way they are.

Re: toggle visibility of groups of layers - feature cancelled

Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2018 2:15 pm
by matita
Thanks! That crept in somewhere between the versions I have. As you say, it solves my immediate problem. I would mark the heading 'solved' if I could edit it :-)