UI for managing layer visibility

[gpparker]

I'm just a Trial user at this point, but after a couple of hours I would say the whole area of managing the visibility of layers is still a weak point in the UI. The functionality is there, it's just not as accessible as it could be, and there are some good reasons to fix this.

 

I found an old post from 2014 with a developer response that suggested some of these issues would be addressed promptly, but it doesn't look like anything has actually changed. In brief, my question is will this issue get higher priority?

 

Below I describe why this matters to me as a potential customer. I am a reasonably experienced Illustrator user, and I don't think I'm making any unusual requests here. Like many of your users, I'm ready to step away from Illustrator because, as an individual user and consumer, I don't want to support the subscription software model. That said, the distinguishing factor for most Adobe products is their absurd level of attention to the UI and its impact on "productivity". We are all spoiled with the benefits of a highly mature UI, so any replacement must play a hard game of catch-up in every aspect of usability.

 

To start with, the right-click menu for objects does not have a "Hide" function.  It should, because the only alternative is very cumbersome.  The only way to hide an arbitrary layer in a reasonably complicated drawing is:

1. Right-click the object.
2. Select "Find in Layers Panel" at the bottom of the popup menu.
3. Click on the Hide/Show checkmark over in the Layers panel.

If I open a PDF with a large number (approx. 8,000) of tiny, ungrouped vector items, e.g. an exported architectural drawing, and I want to hide a few objects, I must go through a tedious series of mouse-based operations for every single teensy line and shape.

 

There are no keyboard shortcuts for the "Find in Layers Panel" function, nor for the "Hide/Show" toggle (they are not even available for customization in the Keyboard Shortcuts Preference).

 

If I select more than one object, then the "Find in Layers Panel" function is disabled. Arghh!  IMHO, it should reveal the first/topmost selected item in the Layers panel. Clicking the Hide/Show checkmark for any item in a selection (assuming you can find it in the Layers panel) toggles all of them.  Of course, just right-clicking and selecting a "Hide" menu item would be preferable.

 

After I'm done working on the unhidden layers, I will want to un-Hide all the hidden layers. What now?

 

There is no "Reveal All Hidden Layers" function. Again, the only way to Show a hidden layer is to click its Hide/Show checkmark in the Layers panel. This is not a practical option if I have to crawl through 8,000 layers. I need a way to do this as a batch, but the "Select All" function will not select hidden items. Sigh... I thought I knew the definition of "All".

 

Instead, I must manually select all layers by first clicking the topmost item in the Layers panel, then scrolling to the bottom of the Layers list and shift-clicking on the last item. Now every layer is really selected, and I can click on any of the Hide/Show check boxes, which hides everything, and then click it again to show everything. Functional, but very tedious.

 

Ideally, I would add a mode to the Layers panel that always brings at least one of the selected items into view automatically whenever the selection is updated.

 

I might also add a couple of filter toggles to the Layers panel that prune the list contents to only visible layers, or only hidden layers.

 

Some of this probably seems like overkill for drawings created in AD, where one would hopefully keep items logically grouped, but that is not always an option, and any large drawing is going to be difficult to manage without more powerful batch visibility functions.

 

For an interesting contrast in UI design, take a look at SketchUp's object hiding functionality, which is very easy to use, and without which it would be nearly impossible to work on complicated 3D objects. SketchUp includes a keyboard shortcut to "Hide" the current selection, and a "Reveal Last Hidden" function to quickly toggle a single object's visibility. It also has a "Show Hidden Geometry" function to make hidden objects semi-visible, which is very handy at times. Naturally, it has a "Reveal All" function to easily restore everything back to normal.

 

FWIW, all of this applies equally to the Lock/Unlock functionality.

[R C-R]

I could not agree more with just about everything you wrote!

 

If nothing else, it would be great if the developers could add a "Hide" item to the right click menu & a "Reveal All Layers" item to the Layers or View menu ASAP. It seems to me at would not require a lot of development work (relatively speaking) & would go a long way toward making a lot of workflows less tedious until a more comprehensive solution could be developed.

[catlover]

My sentimets exactly.

I've asked questions about the guides/grid functionality or , rather the lack thereof, time and again.

Getting a very nice, sympathetic answer.

But alas, nothing has changed......

[Leigh]

Welcome to the forum gpparker :D

 

It’s all about priorities. I’m sure they will get around to addressing the issues mentioned in your post when they can. Do you have a link to the post you mention?

[Schubi63]

YES

 

gpparker put it straight.

 

And I'm also missing a kind of "isolated view" which I was used to use in "Alias Wavefront Maya" already 10 years ago would also a brilliant feature in AD.

 

Without changing the current Show/Hide settings of all the layers, groups and objects - just have the possibility to (via shortcut & right mouse menu) toggle the normal view into an isolated view, where only the selected objects are shown.

 

(if nothing is selected - you cannot switch the view OR it just shows an empty document). In Maya it worked not only object-based. It was also component-based. Brilliant. Exactly what you need in a mass of objects/components.