Visibility Hierarchy

The visibility of an object is not determined by the layers alone but by

•  the “Show All” command

• the attribute “Visibility” of the object

• the visibility according to the user-defined layers where the object belong to

• the visibility of the corresponding standard layer

The command “Show All” (menu "View->Show All" or the corresponding icon) has highest priority. If this command is active, everything is displayed, even if it should be invisible according to the object attribute or to the layers. For each object, there is a flag "is visible". If this flag is set, it depends on the layers whether it is displayed or not. If this flag is not set, the object is not displayed, even if it should be visible according to the layers. If the summarized state according to the user-defined layers is "unused" (or if the object does not belong to any user-defined layer), the visibility is determined by the visibility of the corresponding standard layer. If the summarized state according to the user-defined layers is "show all", the object will be visible even if the corresponding standard layer is invisible.

If the summarized state according to the user-defined layers is "hide all", the object will be invisible even if the corresponding standard layer is visible. The summarized state of the user-defined layers for one object is determined by the order in the layer list. Layers in the state "unused" are not considered in this procedure. The list is handled from the bottom to the top. Therefore, if an object belongs to different layers, the top most will be the "winner".