[David Cutler]

Very interesting question @Vince Unfortunately I don’t have much experience with Layers. My initial thought is that it may be as simple as a setting checkbox that indicates “preserve existing layers when combining” buried somewhere in the preferences – though you probably would have found this by now…

A couple of follow up questions:

1. Are you “overlaying” the pages from separate documents or simply adding another 10 pages to an existing document?

2. Are you using “sets”? (If so I’m probably of no use to you as I don’t use them.)

3. If you are using sets do you have the same issue if you simply combine two documents into 1 PDF file?

4. Is part of the issue that the layer names are the same in both documents?

Ready to watch to see what other post and learn from them… 😎🍿

[Vince French]

Hi @David Cutler

I’m not using sets or adding drawings to an existing open one.

Basically, all I’m doing is combining several drawings from the same folder e.g. Engineering Layouts Sheets 1 of 4 to 4 of 4. It would appear that they all would have come from the same master file created as a DWG file.

The layers all appear to match as they should do if they came from one original.

I like your thought about options to keep the layers but I haven’t found this yet.

[Troy DeGroot]

@Vince I wonder if creating a Layer Configuration would help. Before you insert new sheets, save the layer configuration, then, fingers crossed, you can apply the configuration to the new sheets after. Just thinking, I don’t have drawings to test.

[Vince French]

Hi @Troy

I’ve tried saving the default configurations and then I’ve also tried saving the configurations with new names – unfortunately as soon as I combine the drawings all of the layers are lost.

Maybe another suggestion for a new feature then…

[David Cutler]

Thank you for the clarifications @Vince

I’ll have to pay more attention to the layers the next time that I combine documents. Most of the PDFs I receive don’t have the native layers available. I wonder if perhaps this is the reason why?

[Vince French]

Hi @David

The layers are definitely there to start with but are always lost once the combining has been done.

[David Cutler]

I think I may have a work around for you @Vince

I found that I have the same issue with some plot plans that I was working with yesterday. When I combined the 29 sheets the layer structure is there, but the layers only appear to be present on the first page of the PDF – they are grayed out on the other 28 pages.

So I tried this: I opened the 1st and 2nd sheets separately. I then copied the second sheet from the thumbnail view and switched back to the 1st sheet file. On the thumbnail screen I right clicked and pasted the second page into the file. This appears to have preserved the functionality of the layers. This would be a slow process with a project with 100’s of sheets, but it would get it done and preserve the functionality.

If you haven’t already done so I’d suggest reaching out to Bluebeam on this one. You may have found a bug that they haven’t come across yet…

Good luck!

[Vince French]

That’s a great workaround @David – thank you! 👏

I will contact Bluebeam about why the layers are lost when combining drawings once I’ve remembered the procedure for doing this! 😆