Spent two days fixing a simple layer state mess in a big civil drawing

I was working on a site plan for a new park in Springfield, and the file was a mess from the last drafter. I needed to turn off all the old survey notes but keep the new grading lines. I figured it would take an hour. I started going layer by layer, but the names were weird like 'GRADING_NEW_copy_FINAL_rev2' and the colors were all over the place. I kept turning off the wrong thing and having to undo. What I thought was an hour job turned into basically two full work days of just cleaning up that one drawing. I had to make a whole new layer standard from scratch and redo a bunch of stuff. Has anyone else had a simple layer clean up turn into a huge time sink? What's your fix for inherited drawing chaos?

3 comments

3 Comments

lee721mo ago

Oh man, that hits way too close to home. I mean, I've totally been there with those insane layer names. My fix now is to just bite the bullet and run a full purge, then start a fresh layer state from a template I keep. It still takes forever, but at least you're not chasing ghosts in the old mess.

nora_dixon1mo ago

Purge and restart is the only way sometimes. Your template idea is smart, saves at least a little bit of sanity.

taylor_young1mo ago

Take that template and make it your base drawing. I keep a master file with all my standard layers, line types, and dimension styles already set up. Every new project starts from that same file, not from scratch. It saves me from having to fix someone else's mess later. Still have to clean up the imported stuff from other trades, but at least the parts I control stay tight.