Description

HARDSORT is a utility for managing layer order in a drawing.

The AutoCAD DRAWORDER command is very helpful for arranging the 'display depth' of geometry, hatches and text.  But, as many have learned, it is good only when the drawing is open.  DRAWORDER settings are not honored when drawings are XREFed.  Entities in an XREF are shown in the order they appear in the drawing database.

Unlike the DRAWORDER command, HARDSORT rearranges the drawing database so that it appears as desired under all circumstances.  Also, HARDSORT arranges the drawing by layer rather than by entity selection.  This makes the process much faster and much more predictable.

The use of  an external 'layer order' file automates the procedure and makes it easy to sort drawings based upon your company standards, greatly reducing the possibility that layers will be forgotten or sorted in the wrong order.

Usage

After entering HARDSORT at the command line, the user will be prompted to select a 'layer order' (.LOR) file.  This file is simply a text file listing one layer specification per line.

HARDSORT will then sort the drawing so that entities on the first listed layer are above entities on layers that follow.  The database will be sorted into the same order as the layers are listed in the .LOR file.

Typically, annotation layers (text, dimensions, arrows, etc.) are listed on top, followed by geometry layers, then hatch layers and XREF layers.

HARDSORT also supports wildcards, making support of logical layer naming systems quite simple.

See also:

SOFTSORT

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