Layers and the Layer Catalogue

The grammar

There are two signing families, and only two:

Layers of other subjects (guardrails, barriers, items, GIS, sheet, alignment, analytics) have names of their own and do not enter this grammar: DEFENSA_IMP, BARREIRA_ALTA_DUPLA, CAPCAD_ITEM_REM, GIS_HIGHWAY_, FORMATO, VIEWPORT.

Horizontal

SINA_HOR _ <colour> [_ <cadence>[<device>]] [_ <material>] [_ <code>] [_ <action>]

The fields, in the order they appear:

Vertical

SINA_VERT _ <action>

Actions used: IMP install, MAN keep, REM remove, SUB replace, RMJ and REMANEJAR relocate, REMANEJADA already relocated. Any other complement is accepted and written in upper case (SINA_VERT_J).

Real names, decoded

The names below are shown in the English spelling, the one written to the drawing in an English session.

Characters the CAD will not take in a layer name (< > / \ " : ; ? * | , = and the backtick) are stripped automatically. Accented letters are kept: SEMAFÓRICA is a valid name.

The layer catalogue

The catalogue is the only place that answers the question "which layer — name, colour, linetype, lineweight, transparency, plot — does this drawing role use?". There are nearly 190 named roles, grouped by subject: horizontal and vertical signing, items, annotation, profile, analytics, GIS, alignment, guardrail, barrier, sheet, tactile.

A command never writes "SINA_HOR_BR_ZPA": it asks the catalogue for the matching role and gets the resolved specification back.

What the catalogue does with the request

1. Cleans the name of invalid characters.
2. Applies the style's layer domains: the first rule whose pattern matches the role changes the colour (colour only).
3. Applies the style's explicit entry, if there is one for that role: it changes the name, the colour and the linetype. An explicit user rename beats everything that follows.
4. Translates the name into the language of the active profile — unless the user renamed it explicitly.
5. Glues on the style's layer prefix.

The role (the internal variable) never changes in any of those steps: only the name that goes to the drawing. That is what lets you rename layers freely without commands losing track of one another.

Create, or only name

Asking for the layer is not the same as creating it. Every request says what it wants:

The distinction is deliberate: a layer that already exists in the drawing has almost always been adjusted by somebody, and overwriting it unasked would throw that work away. On the other hand, a frozen or switched-off layer is always thawed and turned on before it receives entities — drawing on an invisible layer is the classic origin of "the command did nothing".

Colours

The colour of a signing layer is resolved from the name itself, combining the paint colour with the action:

On the vertical side, the colour comes from the action:

A style can override any of those colours, by rule (layer domain) or by explicit entry. When nothing resolves, the layer is born colour 7.

Linetypes generated from the cadence

The cadence written in the layer name is not decorative: it becomes a linetype.

When a layer with cadence WxH is created, CapCad registers in the drawing a linetype named exactly like the token — 30x20, 2x4, 4.5x6 — whose pattern is a mark of W and a gap of H, at the real proportions. No .lin file is involved on that path: the pattern is created inside the drawing.

Before generating, CapCad looks the name up in the installed linetype files — its own capcad.lin first, then the agency .lin shipped for the active profile, then the CAD's acad.lin; it only synthesises when none of them has the pattern.

Two exceptions:

• Device cadences (TA8, 2x4TA, CTA4) need a symbol embedded in the linetype and are not generated in this version: those layers stay Continuous, and the device is drawn as blocks.
• An x with a zero mark or gap (5x0, 0x5) is not a valid cadence.

The linetype manager (CAPCAD_LINETYPE_MANAGER) also lets you define a new dash pattern from a token: it appends the pattern to the UserCreatedLinetypes.lin file of the support folder. Only simple dashed patterns (of the 5x3 kind) can be created there.

The names change with the country

The internal canonical name is always the Portuguese one (SINA_HOR_* / SINA_VERT_*). The name written to the drawing follows the language of the active country profile — which is one of three: Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish (Latin America) and English (everyone else).

So the same role produces:

What is never translated: the marking codes (D1013.1, LFO3, ZPA, LBO), the cadences (2x4), the materials, and layers outside the two signing families. Spanish translates the family and the colours, but keeps the action codes in Portuguese.

The translation is reversible: when reading a drawing, CapCad converts any spelling back to the canonical one, so a drawing made in English is understood normally by a CapCad running in Portuguese. The ambiguous BL — white in Spanish, blue in English — is resolved by the family in the name.

Why commands never type a layer by hand

Because a literal name bypasses the whole mechanism above. The entity ends up on a layer the active style never created, never renamed, never coloured and never prefixed — and the defect is invisible until somebody opens the drawing under another style, or in another country.

For you that means a practical guarantee: changing the style or the country really does change every drawing that follows.

There are documented exceptions — a few commands let you type a layer name, and in that case the name stands as typed.

Layer tools

Notes

• Auxiliary layers do not plot. Several catalogue roles are born with plotting off — the auxiliary edge lines, the quantity-take-off areas, the viewports, the sheet articulation layers in model space.
• Transparency is part of the role. Analysis and template layers are born with transparency (50 % or 65 %, for instance) so they do not hide the drawing underneath.
• The prefix belongs to the style, not to the country. Changing country changes the spelling of the names; changing style changes the prefix, the aliases and the colours.

See also

• Styles — who renames, recolours and prefixes the layers.
• Country profiles — who decides the language of the names.
• The CapCad ecosystem — how layers, style and project fit together.