When you copy/paste vectors that exist in different layers, the new vectors all go to your current active layer. Intuitively I kind of understand this, but it clashes with the feature of assigning toolpaths to layers instead of individual vectors.
In the video, you can see I have a roundover layer (red). I have a toolpath defined to run a no-offset contour on that layer. When I copy/paste the entire design, all vectors get dropped into the default layer (black). The roundover toolpath ends up only being applied to the original vectors, not the copies. I have to go through each object and move the individual vectors back to the roundover layer.
At the risk of sounding dramatic, this makes the layer-based toolpath feature useless for me, as quickly creating arrays of different combinations of objects to fill a board is my main use case for it.
It would be great to have a “preserve vector layers” checkbox for the array tools to give us a workaround for this without affecting the base behavior or copy/paste.
I see there’s been a few other topics about this over the years so I’m not alone:
Not sure what you did in your video there to somehow not get the Toolpaths assigned to the original vector linked to the copies.
I agree that preserving the Layer Assignments when copy/pasting vectors would be nice, but I have not found it to be a show stopper - mainly due that the Toolpaths assigned to the original vectors get linked to the copies. As long as the copies all have the Toolpaths I want them to have, it doesn’t really matter what layer they’re in. In fact, I often use this quirk to ensure I keep the original identified & place all the copies into a different layer. Then if any changes are needed, delete all the copies, re-work the original, then make an array of new copies.
What you’re talking about works for toolpaths assigned for vectors, not toolpaths assigned to layers. You can apply a toolpath to a layer and all vectors inside that layer are automatically included. This theoretically allows you to easily move vectors in and out of your job without fussing around as much with toolpath settings. For example, if you encounter a problem cutting object #2 in a batch, but object #1 worked fine, you can pop the vector for 1 into a different layer and rerun the program. Object 1 will automatically be excluded from the toolpath calculations.
Basically, I would like the layer-based toolpaths to work the same way as what you described with vector based toolpaths. Without it, the vector based paths seem strictly better.
For what it’s worth, the Duplicate command, CTRL-D, allows you to paste items back to their current layer if you’re making copies without a hard constraint for positioning.
Adding that option to the array commands seems like a good idea, too.
This is super helpful, thank you! I somehow missed that a duplicate command even existed. This is definitely sufficient for me. I do think having it as an option for the array commands is a great idea though. It can only help.
Grouping / ungrouping will also lose layer assignments.
I have two objects that are on different layers. They need to stay in the same relative position. If I want to center that as a whole, the easiest is to group, center, ungoup. Except that flattens the layers. I never found an effective work-around for that problem.
