How to prevent that Illustrator file opens with expanded layers

Claudia Gruber (fofimo)

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Jun 15, 2003, 3:20:59 PM6/15/03

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In my designs I am using several main layers with lots of sub layers that again contain sub layers etc. So all in all I have to deal with quite a lot of layers. I always collaps the layers to see the main layers only when I save the Illustrator (10) file. But when I reopen it all layers are automatically expanded and my layers palette becomes very difficult to survey. Is there a setting, switch, shortcut I should know which prevents this behaviour and leaves the layers as they are saved?

Thanks for your input.

Claudia

BobHill

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Jun 16, 2003, 12:12:45 PM6/16/03

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Claudia,

Every file has one full layer. Beyond that, all additional full layers must be created by you. A sublayer is created each time you create an path, compound path, group, or other types of objects, such as Placing a raster image. Within multiple objects which are sublayers, will be sub-sublayers of the individual objects that make it up. When you click on the triangle ahead of the layer, sublayer you'll open the sublayers below it in structure. When you Save the image to a file and reopen the file, if you left all the sublayers open, they should be open upon opening. If you close them so only the full layers are in Layers palette, then they should open that way.

Bob

Claudia Gruber (fofimo)

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Jun 28, 2003, 8:25:25 AM6/28/03

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Bob,

sorry for not answering for such a long time, but I could not join the forum for quite some time.

Regarding your comment:

I 100% aggree to what you say! This is also my understanding/expectation how the layers should behave.

But look at the attached pictures: On the "before" you can see that I closed all the layers before I saved the file. On the "after" you see how the layers where displayed after I reopened the file without any further action. ( I am using the german version where layers are called "Ebenen").

Has anybody an idea what might be the reason for this and how to prevent it?

Thanks a lot.

Claudia

<http://www.fofimo.de/forum/Ill/layers_before.png>

<http://www.fofimo.de/forum/Ill/layers_after.png>

BobHill

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Jun 30, 2003, 11:59:42 AM6/30/03

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Perhaps Teri might have an explanation on this, Claudia, as it might just be something different in the German version. Otherwise it might be caused by something in conflict, or a file corruption somehow in Illustrator. Have you tried the catch-all fix (Delete the AIPrefs file)?

Bob

Claudia Gruber (fofimo)

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Jul 1, 2003, 1:39:56 PM7/1/03

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Bob,

yes, I have deleted the AIPrefs file - without success, no change in the behaviour.

Claudia

Alexander Kogan.

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Jul 1, 2003, 2:34:48 PM7/1/03

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Claudia,

I may be wrong, but from what I can see, it's the default behavior of AI to expand completely the hierarchy of the existant layers on opening a file.

That is, not only the top-level layer, but also the nested ones. So if you, for example, have two top-level layers, and the first one has another layers nested in it and the second one does not, you'll get the first one expanded till the last nested layer in the hierarchy, and the second one will stay unexpanded.

Claudia Gruber (fofimo)

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Jul 5, 2003, 3:51:42 PM7/5/03

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Alexander,

so you mean that this is the default behaviour and there is no way to tell Illustrator to remember the current status of the layers and sub-layers (whether they are expanded or not) when I save the file and recreate this status of the layers when I reopen the file :( that's pitty.

Thanks very much for your explanation.