I don’t know if this is striclty a Mac version issue neither a Rhino 8 one, but I don’t remember experiencing this in Rhino 7.
Changing the layer of a bloc is quite erratic (any method, through copy or move…). After performing the change, Rhino indicates the bloc is in the new layer by name (ie in the status bar and the object properties panel), but it behave as not being: it is still coloured like in the original layer, and visibility is linked to the first layer, not the new one. Yet if you try to delete the new layer, it warns you the object actually is in the layer.
This doesn’t happen with other kinds of geometry, like polysurfaces, etc.
To get around it, I need to explode the bloc until I get other geometries.
I don’t know if this is a bug or a feature, but it’s really strange and annoying.
Thanks for you feed-back.
Hi @exentriq,
What you see is the same behaviour as in R7. Here’s a quick summary of what is going on.
First off, you need to distinguish between the elements you have drawn and the block into which you incorporate them.
You draw the elements once and as you draw them they are placed on layers just like any other Rhino object. With Rhino’s default layers elements drawn on Layer 01 are red, elements drawn on Layer 03 are blue, etc - assuming you stick with the default Display Color setting which is “By Layer”. We’ll come back to the other options in a moment.
You then create a Block Instance from your objects. That Block Instance is placed on whichever layer you have selected at the time. Whatever layer that is, it has no effect on the colours of our elements, which are tied to the colours of the layers on which they were drawn, because we had Display Color set to “By Layer” when we drew them. If you edit any instance of the block you will see those original settings.
If we draw more elements, but this time set the Display Color option to “By Parent”, they initially look no different to our first set. But if we incorporate them into a block that block becomes their parent and they take on the colour of the block. If we copy the block to a new layer, or create a new instance on a different layer, the elements in those instances of the block will take on the colours of the layers on which we place the blocks.
If we go on to draw more elements, but this time use the “Custom…” option then when we incorporate them into a new block we see that they retain their colours regardless of the layer on which we place a block instance (i.e just like the “By Layer” version).
Here’s an illustration of the above:
The boxes are all drawn on Layer 01, the spheres on Layer 03. The three block instances are created on the Default layer, then copied to Layer 04.
HTH
Jeremy
Edit: One additional point: if you want to change the colours of block instances where you have used “By Layer” or “Custom” you can edit any instance and change the colours or change the assigned layers, and all your instances will change. You can also at any time change the colours of the layers on which the elements were drawn and all your block instances where the “By Layer” option was in play when the elements were drawn will change to reflect the new colours.
Hi Jeremy,
You reply solves the point, but I confess I still really struggle with blocs.
Thanks.