Copying and Layer dragging madness

[Dr. Dave]

These issues are driving me to drink!

1. When I duplicate a layer, whether it's copy/paste or CTRL + ALT, the new layer is on  top/above the source. For example, when trying to create a stack of cards, I need to manually drag the layers from top to bottom, otherwise the 'stack' appears upside down.
2. Layer organization is clunky, or I don't understand the mechanics - I drag a layer down and instead of simply moving that layer below another, it automatically makes it a child of that next layer. The only way I found around this is to use CTRL + [ OR ].

[Brad Brighton]

@Dr. Dave For #2: Making a child layer is one of the options. When you drag there should be a visual insertion point that should tell you whether you are inserting within or moving below.

[carl123]

1. Regarding copy and paste

On the top toolbar there is an icon on the right called "Insert Behind The Selection" which when pressed will make your next paste command paste the layer below the one currently selected.

This option can also be found in Layer > Insertion > Behind

With a bit of lateral thinking you can assign a keystroke to the above option and replace your normal CTRL+V (paste) keystroke with a Paste Behind key sequence.

 

2. When dragging a layer down keeping your cursor in the space to the left of the layer icons will prevent you accidentally creating a child layer - it's just a learning curve

[Hilltop]

3 hours ago, carl123 said:

2. When dragging a layer down keeping your cursor in the space to the left of the layer icons will prevent you accidentally creating a child layer - it's just a learning curve

Nice to know. Thanks.

[Dr. Dave]

8 hours ago, carl123 said:

1. Regarding copy and paste

On the top toolbar there is an icon on the right called "Insert Behind The Selection" which when pressed will make your next paste command paste the layer below the one currently selected.

This option can also be found in Layer > Insertion > Behind

With a bit of lateral thinking you can assign a keystroke to the above option and replace your normal CTRL+V (paste) keystroke with a Paste Behind key sequence.

I appreciate the time you took to explain this, in fact it helped me create a shortcut just for Insert Behind. However this does not help with my original problem - when I CTRL + DRAG an object down a bit, in this case the representation of a card (my first screen cap above), I then want to use CTRL J to insert the next several duplicates below the original with appropriate spacing. CTRL + DRAG creates a duplicate above the original, even with "Insert behind" enabled, which is super annoying and makes that function appear more gimmicky than useful.

Illustrator has CTRL + F (paste in front) and CTRL + B (paste in back), then I use CTRL + D (duplicate) to create any number of duplicates in the correct direction and spacing as the original copy/paste. I can create a thousand in seconds just by holding down CTRL + D - no additional functions to assign or enable.