If you have access to Full AutoCAD, and Express Tools, LAYMRG or LAYDEL commands do a good job of eliminating the unwanted layers (by merging or deleting the referenced entities).
Sometimes while using AutoCAD, you want to delete a layer, but even after removing all entities from the layer in question, it will not purge. Hopefully the following troubleshooting will help.
Causes
There are really only two causes. An entity is referencing the layer you are trying to delete, or it’s a corrupt drawing. Look for entities in these places:
How To Remove Unwanted Layers In Autocad File
- Delete the unwanted layers in Autocad Monday, February 21, 2011 Ads When a drawing gets complicated and cluttered with drawing objects, we also notice that it is also using a lot of layers and some of these layers turns out to be no longer necessary.
- Open a drawing that has unpurgeable items (bunch of.A1nnn blocks) Say “A1.DWG”. Turn On, Unlock, and Thaw all your layers. Type WBLOCK and choose the “Objects” option. Select everything in your drawing (crossing, window, etc.).
- Block definitions
- Empty text strings
- Viewports with frozen layers
Solutions
Depending on the version of AutoCAD and 3rd party applications that you have:
Making Layers In Autocad
- If you have Express Tools, use the Layer Merge command to merge entities from the mystery layer onto layer 0 (zero).
- Go to http://www.manusoft.com and take a look at SuperPurge. This tool will delete any referenced item using it’s hard purge method. This low cost tool is well worth it’s price.
- Find the entities that are referencing the layer you wish to delete and delete those entities, or move them to another layer.
- Use BEDIT or REFEDIT to check your block definitions.
- Turn on QTEXTMODE in order to see empty text strings.
- If you have viewports, switch to each and make sure the layer isn’t frozen.
How To Remove Unwanted Layers In Autocad
If none of these work, you may have a corrupt drawing. Try using WBLOCK to create a new drawing.