Layer Manager

The Layer Manager is where you plan your quantity layers before you measure: the list of materials and items a job needs, each with its name, its colour and its measurement settings already decided.

Set the list up once and takeoff becomes filling in a prepared bill: every group is named the way your bill reads, coloured consistently, and measuring the right things from the first click.

Open it from the button at the top of the editor’s right panel. It is also the third stop on the first-open guided tour.

Why plan layers at all

• Consistent names and colours across sheets. Groups with the same name and colour total together across a drawing set, so “Concrete Pavers” measured on four sheets arrives as one figure. A prepared layer list makes that automatic.
• Consistent settings. Depth, perimeter and the rest are set once on the layer, not re-decided sheet by sheet.
• Consistent across people. Everyone taking off against the same list produces work that consolidates cleanly.

The two tabs

Tab	What it holds
Local Layers	This drawing’s layer list
The drawing set’s name	The set’s shared layer library, available to every drawing in the set

The pair work together:

• Sync to Local pulls the set’s layers into the drawing you are working on.
• Syncing to the drawing set pushes your local list up, so the next drawing can start from it.
• Both show a confirmation of what will change before anything happens.

When a drawing opens for the first time in a set that already has layers, the end of the guided tour offers to import them, which is the same pull without opening the Layer Manager at all.

Managing the list

• Add Layer starts a new row: type the name, pick the colour.
• Each layer carries its own measurement settings, the same ones a group has: Perimeter with its Pₑ, Pᵥ and Pₙ parts, Volume with depth, Boundary Adjust, and for linear layers Line Width, H1: Depth and H2: Second Height.
• Clone layer copies a layer’s settings without its regions, the quick way to make “Paving Type B” from “Paving Type A”.
• Drag to reorder sets the order layers appear in.
• Layers can be recoloured, renamed and deleted, with a confirmation before a delete.

Save & Close commits your edits. Closing with the × instead asks before discarding unsaved changes.

What each measurement setting does

Importing a layer list from CSV

A bill of quantities usually already exists as a spreadsheet, and the Layer Manager meets it halfway:

1. Download blank template gives you a CSV with the right columns.
2. Fill it in, in Excel or anywhere else, one row per layer.
3. Import CSV loads it, and reports exactly what it did: new layers to create, existing layers to replace, and anything skipped because it already exists or its details were incomplete.

Download as CSV exports the current list the same way, so a good layer list can travel to another drawing set or another estimator.

A workflow that pays off

1. When a job arrives, build the layer list once from the bill of quantities, by hand or from CSV.
2. Sync it to the drawing set.
3. Open each sheet, accept the layer import, and take off into prepared groups.
4. Consolidated totals across the whole set line up with the bill by construction, not by luck.

Common questions

Do layers measure anything by themselves? No. A layer is a prepared group: the name, colour and settings are ready, and the quantities arrive as you take off into it.

What happens if I change a layer’s settings after taking off? The same as editing a group’s settings: derived quantities such as volume update for the whole group.

Can I use the Layer Manager without a drawing set library? Yes. Local Layers works per drawing on its own. The library earns its keep on multi-sheet jobs and shared work.

We already name groups as we go. Why switch? Nothing forces you to. The Layer Manager removes the two failure modes of naming as you go: the same material under two names, and inconsistent settings between sheets.