Draw Order in Layout Space

Can Draw Order be controlled in Layout Space?
I find that fills and raster images and other objects only occasionally obey BringtoFront and SendtoBack commands. Rhino 7 here for now.

It should, but you might find that the Draw Order isn’t what it seems. You can use the command ClearDrawOrder to clear the draw order of objects to reset them. Hatches, curves, text should respect draw order. If you have pictures you’ve inserted using Picture then they’re textures on surfaces and you can control their visibility through setting their z-height.

If you have multiple detail views on top of each other they can compete and don’t respect the draw order (at least in my experience) so best to avoid overlapping them.

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Can a z height can be set for an image on a layout? If so, I don’t know how.

If you use the Box Edit Panel you should be able to select your picture and then change the z-height (red mark-up in the picture). Looks like I told a fib @djhg, z-height doesn’t actually make a difference, it seems picture print order is whacky and if you select/move a surface or picture it will send it to the back…

“if you select/move a surface or picture it will send it to the back…”
Thanks Ruka, but this isn’t the case on my system. The draw order stays the same here. It may be that the most recently imported picture goes to the back – at least this is the case with the two images I’m working with.
I can’t tell what’s determining the draw order, but I wish I could find something which consistently controls it.

The information on this page helps – specifically this bit:

Notes: Only the draw order of annotations, hatches, details, curves, and point objects can be changed. Surfaces, meshes, and SubDs cannot be selected by the draw order commands. Therefore, you cannot send a surface behind a hatch, but you can bring a hatch in front of a surface.

Ah! There it is. Really helpful to know. Thankyou.

Hi -

Only points, curves, hatches, annotations, and details can be used for draw order commands.

I’m not sure what the goal is. If it is to have a picture object appear on top of curves and hatches, using SendToBack on those objects will do that. Also moving the picture object up in Z (e.g. Move Pause 0 0,0,10) will do that.

-wim

i can remember wishing to be able to draw order picture frames either, was that ever written up? could not find anything on youtrack, though i am not so experienced looking for something there.

It’s on the list as RH-47636 - DrawOrder support for SRF
That ticket is not public but I’ve added this thread.
-wim

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“Also moving the picture object up in Z (e.g. Move Pause 0 0,0,10 ) will do that.”

This command should work in layout space?

Hi David -

Yes.
-wim

I don’t understand how to accomplish it. I can’t seem to type it into the cli. And if I copy the text from here into the command line the cli shows the execution of an operation, but it doesn’t bring an image in front of another image. Should it?

Hi David -

Yes. If you post a .3dm file with two such images, I can take a look.
-wim

While shifting picture using Z works in layout view, I found it wasn’t being respected when printing to PDF (with RhinoPDF)?

I’m using Rhino7, in case its a R8 difference?

Hi Ruka -

In a quick test, that seems to work fine in Rhino 8, but you’d have to provide a .3dm file to make sure there isn’t anything more specific going on in the file that you are testing with.
-wim