 In this training video, we're going to look at layers within Visio. Now layers are on the home tab in the editing section of the ribbon. And when you don't select any shapes, you can then view layer properties. When you've selected shapes, you can assign shapes to layers. So without anything being selected, you can then view the present layer properties. So in this example already, I've created three new layers and there are three which we can see new project controls, new project startup, and these are controlling the connectors. So it's new project controls, connectors, new project startup, connectors and project management. So to look at what these layers are, we can turn Visible off and then see what they supply into. So we can see these three, with them being not visible anymore, we can see there's no connectors, there's no middle shape called project management. So the connectors have now been controlled by layers. So if I turn them on one at a time, we can see what's happening here. So new project controls, which is the right hand side. Click on it, apply. And then we can see those layers come in for the connectors, project management, apply. And there's the shape project management and new project startup connectors is on the left hand side. So all these connectors on the left hand side will now be brought in. And these have been set up already. And we can see what's happening now. When these were set up, Visible for this particular diagram brought in two layers by default, one for the connectors for all of these blue connectors and one for the data graphic, which it gave to the project management. So what I've done here, I've reassigned the the shapes to the new layers. So anything with zero against it is safe to delete. Now, if you remove by clicking to move a layer, which has still got numbers against it, you will actually affect the whole diagram. So if I was to delete the new project controls with six against it, you actually you actually delete the whole of the shapes. So I was to remove this layer. I don't only remove the layer, I remove all the shapes that go with that layer. So you've got to be careful when you're moving layers. Always make sure there's nothing against it. So the default layers that came with Visible in this diagram. I'm now going to delete because there's nothing against them. So connectors zero. I'm going to remove and it says here removing this layer will delete all the shapes belong into it. Are you sure you want to remove the layer? Yes, I am because there's nothing that is assigned to it. And I go again with the data graphic one and remove that. So these are the three layers now which have been in operation for this diagram, which have been created and have had shapes reassigned to them. So I'm going to create two more layers now and I'll then show how shapes can be reassigned to layers. So I click OK. Now I'm going to highlight the shapes on the left hand side, the new project shapes down to the last one. So you can see these blue rectangles around one, two, three, four, five, six, seven of them. So these seven shapes, I'm going to put it all in one layer. So now I'm going to assign them using the drop and I'm going to assign to layer. Now, if I wanted to, I could assign these to the new project startup connectors so they would come in with the connectors. So if I wanted these to come in with the connectors, all I've got to do is click on the arrow and they will become part of the connectors. This is what I didn't want. So when I got rid of the other layers that Visio gave me, when I was creating the connectors for the layer of connectors, there was a tick against the Visio layer, which is called connectors. I took the tick out of that one and I put it against the new project startup connectors so I knew then that I had assigned the connectors to the right layer. So you've got to be pretty careful when you look at the layers as to what you're doing. So I want this layer to be separate by itself. So I'm not going to assign it to the new project startup connectors. I'm going to create a brand new layer. So new and I'm going to call it new project startup. OK. And the minute the tick is against it, that's telling you that all these shapes are against this new layer. And I click OK. Now we're going to see how how the new layer looks. So I've deselected the shapes, gone into layers, layer properties. So I just want to double check that the new product startup is working. So I'm going to take Visible off, apply and we can see it's working. So they're all against the one layer. So I put it back on, apply. So it's working. So whenever I've done a layer, I always check it by turning off the Visible to make sure it's working correctly. This is exactly what I'm going to do with the next layer. Go on another layer now for new project controls. So I'm going to highlight all these shapes, repeat the process. So layers assigned to layer. I don't assign to any of these. I'm just going to go new and I want the name to be new project controls. And there's the tick against it. OK, now I'm going to check how it works. So I've deselected all the shapes, layers, layer properties. Now when I look at new project controls, which is the top one, Visible, take apply and we can see that it's now all under control for that layer. I'm now going to put Visible back on, apply. OK. So all the layers have now been set. We can do this lovely things you can do with layers when they've all been set up. And we're now going to have a look at this. So with nothing selected, layer properties, I might, for example, want to look at colouring a certain layer like, for example, if I wanted the connectors to look at different colour, I now got two connector layers, one for new project control and one for new project startup. I could make them different colours if I wanted to, so let's see how this works. So new project control connectors, colour, it says what colour do you want? And these different colours down here. So I might pick on for this one red, apply. I'm OK, I'm not going to do OK here just to apply, see what happens. Or we can see what's happened here. So they've now changed red, I can now make the other connectors a different colour if I wanted to, I can take colour off, apply and now they're back to standard. So I wanted them to print with certain colours, for example, I could say, OK, I want the new project control connectors to go a certain colour, which I'll leave it back in the red I chose, I remember the last colour. The other connectors, I choose a different colour. I'll go for green example. I'll apply, you can see they've gone green, they've gone red. If I was to print this, they will print as is, they will print as is with the colours. Now I might want to take away the colours so I can now remove the colours, apply and now they're back to standard. I might want to print only part of the diagram to explain to somebody. So I might not want to show the project control side of it. So the project control side, I'm going to take away the visibility of the connectors plus the project control, apply and now I can just talk about the project start up and I could print this now. If I want to print it, the properties, you've got to tell it what you don't want to print, I don't want to print now. New project controls and I don't want to print. The new project control connectors, I want these to come off as well. So that's the only print now, what is visible. OK, and now if we look at it, fire, print and there we go. We could then take this to somebody and all of a sudden we've got the part, the project you want to talk about. If you want to talk about the whole project, I can go back in, go back to the layers, properties. And I'll make them visible, I don't have to make them visible, I can just print them. So even without them being visible, I can still set the print, apply, OK, go back into the print and there we go. So it don't have to be visible to print. And I'll put them back to the way they were by default with everything ticked. I got it all visible, all the print, apply, OK. And this now completes the training video on layers where we've looked at creating layers, looked at how to delete a layer, but making sure that there's nothing assigned against it and also controlling layers then for color purposes and for printing purposes. So this completes the training video on layers and layer control. If you enjoyed this video, make sure you like and subscribe to our channel. Hope to see you for the next tutorial and thanks for watching.