BEWARE OF TURNED OF LAYERS!

  • BEWARE OF TURNED OF LAYERS!

    Posted by David Cutler on July 18, 2025 at 9:29 am

    One of my favorite features of a high quality PDF is when the person preparing the PDF includes layers. Being able to turn layers off to reduce clutter on your screen and see details that might otherwise be hidden.

    However, I got bit this morning when I found a document provided by my client had sent a document to me with 4 layers turned off. I, in turn, distributed the same document to my trade partners.

    Turning these layers on provides a completely different view of the project in one area as you can see in the screen shots below. I’m adding a step in my workflow to ensure all layers are turned on before I distribute the documents to avoid this issue in the future!

    David Cutler replied 2 weeks, 2 days ago 3 Members · 6 Replies
  • 6 Replies
  • David Cutler

    Member
    July 18, 2025 at 7:08 pm
    Points: 29,504
    Rank: UC2 Brainery Advanced Brown Belt II UC2 Brainery Advanced Brown Belt II

    The plot thickens!

    I really can’t explain this one. Later in the day after turning the layers on and continuing my markups, saving as I go, I used “Ctrl+Z” to undo a markup. Immediately after I noticed that the same 4 layers had turned off!

    Maybe I need to update to Revu 21.6.1 as I’m still running 21.5….

    • Doug McLean

      Member
      July 19, 2025 at 3:10 pm
      Points: 16,871
      Rank: UC2 Brainery Advanced Blue Belt I UC2 Brainery Advanced Blue Belt I

      Don’t you just love it when something weird happens?

  • David Cutler

    Member
    July 21, 2025 at 7:52 am
    Points: 29,504
    Rank: UC2 Brainery Advanced Brown Belt II UC2 Brainery Advanced Brown Belt II

    And it continues to get better!

    Just checked the updated set that I posted to our file share site and the same 4 layers appear to be turned off! Thinking that perhaps I need to create a new PDF file from my source PDF to see if that “sets” all the layers as on…

    Beyond frustrating as I expect some of my trade partners don’t know how to work with layers to ensure that they are turned on…

    • David Cutler

      Member
      July 21, 2025 at 8:00 am
      Points: 29,504
      Rank: UC2 Brainery Advanced Brown Belt II UC2 Brainery Advanced Brown Belt II

      Okay, I think I figured the issue out!

      Appears that the “default” layer display was set to have these 4 layers turned off. So I changed the setting to “display all” and then saved the “default” to include all layers being turned on.

      That was frustrating, but at least now I understand what the problem was! 🙃

      • Troy DeGroot

        Organizer
        July 22, 2025 at 11:05 am
        Points: 25,804
        Rank: UC2 Brainery Advanced Brown Belt UC2 Brainery Advanced Advanced Brown Belt Rank

        Great share @DavidCutler

        Way to see it through to finally find the solution. Most people don’t know layers are even a thing. Making sure its on Default before saving is a great solution, I didn’t think of off hand. Again, thanks for sharing.

        • David Cutler

          Member
          July 22, 2025 at 12:18 pm
          Points: 29,504
          Rank: UC2 Brainery Advanced Brown Belt II UC2 Brainery Advanced Brown Belt II

          Thank you @troy-degroot !

          The crazy thing I found here was that the “default” layer display setting excluded the 4 layers. I’m guessing that someone had those layers turned off for some reason and then accidently saved the “default” layer setting. I can’t think of a reason why, in this case, they would have excluded them. 😀

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