Organizing your designs

To bring some more clarity and structure in your design you can use Layer Groups (folders). You can organize your design in logical parts to manipulate them more efficiently.

Layer groups have their own special properties, including colors and wireframe mode. Layer groups show as a folder icon in the Layers panel.

Adding a layer group

Click on the New Layer icon (at the top of the Layers panel) to add a new layer group.

Objects can be added to a layer folder by dragging them above the layer in the Layers panel. The layer folder will highlight. Releasing the mouse button with the layer folder highlighted will move the object(s) into the layer folder.

If there is a selected object in the Layer group, adding any new shapes or paths will automatically add them within the same layer group.

Note: Bring to Front/Send to Back work inside the Layers group boundaries.

Frame mode

Frame mode is used for anchoring elements within the layer group.

You can set the layer group to frame mode by selecting the layer folder and ticking the Frame checkbox in the Inspector panel

If you set the anchoring for any element within a layer folder, it will switch to Frame mode automatically when you reselect the layer folder.

Frame mode will show/define a selection box enclosing the layer folder content when the layer folder is selected. This will use the Layer Group color.

This selection box also acts as a clipping object. Objects (or parts of objects) moved outside the selection box frame will become invisible. Note that properties outside of geometry bounding box such as outside borders or effects such shadows can be clipped. When activating Frame mode all containing child objects are anchored automatically to top left.

Layer group contents can be moved, resized, or rotated using the Layer tool M on the toolbar. Using this tool, click on any object in the working space to select and drag to move the layer group which contains that object. Alternatively, select the layer folder in the Layers panel.

Layer groups also have some extra properties that are not available to normal objects:

• Layer folders (and all their contents) can be set to wireframe view. This makes it easier to work on other content without hiding the layer folder content.

• Layer folders can be assigned a color. The layer folder color will define the colors of bounding boxes and anchor points on that layer.