LayerSync

How LayerSync works

These are the tabs inside the actual app, in the order they appear — every screenshot below is a real, unedited capture of LayerSync running.

Click to zoom

Tab: AutoCAD → Excel

Step 1 — Read every layer from the whole batch, then edit or export

Add DWG files and LayerSync lists every layer of every drawing in one grid — with entity counts, used/unused and Xref flags — ready to edit in place or export to a single Excel workbook.

1. 1Add Files… or Add Folder… — mix and match any number of DWGs from anywhere on disk into one batch.
2. 2LayerSync scans every file with a live progress bar and reports how many layers and layouts it found across the batch.
3. 3The Layers tab has one row per layer per file: Used, Xref, entity count, New Name, Merge Into, Color, Linetype, Line Weight, Transparency, Plot, Off, Frozen, Locked and Description.
4. 4Search by name with * and ? wildcards, and filter by Used, Unused or Xref layers. Find & Replace… renames many of the shown layers at once, with optional match-case and regular expressions.
5. 5To merge layers, pick a target in Merge Into — the source layer's entities (including those inside block definitions) move to the target and the emptied layer is removed. The preview groups merges by target so you can confirm them at a glance.
6. 6The Layouts tab renames paper-space layouts and changes their Tab Order.
7. 7Edit right in the grid, or click Export to Excel… for one timestamped .xlsx with Layers, Layouts, Properties and DimStyles sheets. Write Directly… skips Excel entirely and goes straight to the diff preview.

Options on this screen

Used / Unused / Xref layers

Filter the layer grid so a large batch doesn't bury the layers you're after.

Merge Into

Move a layer's entities to another layer and remove the emptied one. Layer 0 and Xref-dependent layers can't be merged away or renamed — the preview marks them as blocked.

Export to Excel…

Write everything on screen — including edits already made in the grid — to one workbook.

Write Directly…

Skip Excel and preview the in-app edits, then write them back.

Click to zoom

Tab: Properties

Set title-block data across a whole set through drawing properties

The Properties tab reads each drawing's DWGPROPS — the standard fields and every custom property — so the values a title block references can be changed for the whole batch in one step.

1. 1Open the Properties tab: one row per drawing per property — Title, Subject, Author, Keywords, Comments and HyperlinkBase always appear, followed by the drawing's own custom properties.
2. 2Edit a value in place. Clearing a custom property's value removes it from the drawing.
3. 3Add Property… sets a custom property (for example Rev = B) on every scanned drawing, overwriting an existing property of the same name.
4. 4Search by property name to see one property across the whole batch, or by file name to see one drawing's properties.
5. 5In Excel, the Properties sheet has one row per drawing; a column header you type into a new column becomes a new custom property.
6. 6After writing, LayerSync refreshes the drawing's fields (the equivalent of UPDATEFIELD), so a title block that references a property shows the new value without opening the file.

Options on this screen

Add Property…

Create or overwrite a custom property on every scanned drawing.

Empty value

Removes that custom property from the drawing.

Click to zoom

Tab: Dim Styles

Standardize dimension text height, arrows and scale

The Dim Styles tab lists every dimension style of every drawing with the four settings that batch clean-ups actually target, and a bulk bar to set one value across the whole list.

1. 1Open the Dim Styles tab: one row per dimension style per drawing, showing Text Height, Text Style, Arrow Size and Overall Scale.
2. 2Edit a cell in place, or fill the boxes in the Set for shown styles bar and click Apply to shown — every style the search currently shows gets the values you filled in. Leave a box blank to keep that setting.
3. 3Styles that come from an XREF can't be edited from the host drawing; they're greyed out here and marked blocked in the preview.
4. 4When the write completes, LayerSync regenerates the existing dimensions that use a changed style, so the drawing shows the new sizes immediately instead of after the next DIMREGEN.
5. 5A text style that doesn't exist in a drawing fails only that style, with a clear reason, while the rest of the file is written.

Options on this screen

Apply to shown

Set text height, text style, arrow size and/or overall scale on every style the search is currently showing.

Click to zoom

Tab: Excel → AutoCAD

Preview the exact diff, then write back

Whether the edits come from the grid or from an edited workbook, LayerSync matches every row back to its exact object and shows precisely what will change before touching a single drawing.

1. 1For an Excel round trip, choose the edited workbook and the DWG folder to match it against — matching is by exact file name. Edits made in the app (Write Directly…) skip this step.
2. 2Choose a backup folder, or leave Automatic backup on — every file about to be written is copied there, unmodified, first.
3. 3The Diff Preview lists every file with a change count and a blocked count. Select a file to see its Layers, Layouts, Properties and Dim Styles tabs; each tab carries a count badge, so you can see at a glance which one holds the changes.
4. 4Every row is marked Will change, No change or Cannot write with the reason (for example an Xref-dependent layer or a name that already exists). Show unchanged rows reveals the rest.
5. 5Export Preview… saves the diff grid to its own workbook if someone needs to sign off on the planned changes first.
6. 6Tick exactly the files to include and click Write Selected Files. After writing, LayerSync reopens each saved file and verifies that every value actually landed.
7. 7Rollback All in the results report restores everything touched in the run; Restore Backup… restores from any earlier run.

Options on this screen

Automatic backup

Each written file is copied, unmodified, into the backup folder before any change is made.

Show unchanged rows

By default only rows that will change (or can't) are listed.

Click to zoom

Tab: Clean Up

Purge a batch of received drawings

Clean Up removes unused definitions from a whole folder of drawings. It runs the purge in memory first, so the counts you see are what would really be removed — nested unused items included — and nothing is written until you click Clean Now.

1. 1Add files or a folder — each is analysed as it's added, and the table shows what would be removed per file by category.
2. 2Choose what to remove: unused blocks, layers, linetypes, text styles, dimension styles, multiline / multileader / table styles and materials, and registered applications. Zero-length lines, arcs and polylines and empty text are off by default because they delete drawing content.
3. 3Double-click a file (or use Details) to see every item that would go, grouped by category.
4. 4Layer 0, Defpoints, the current layer, Xref-dependent items, the Standard styles and blocks that are still referenced are always kept.
5. 5Click Clean Now. With Automatic backup on, each file is backed up first, then cleaned, then re-analysed to confirm nothing removable remains. Roll Back All restores the originals.

Options on this screen

What to remove

Seven purge categories on by default; zero-length geometry and empty text are opt-in.

Analyze

Re-runs the analysis after you change the options.

Environment & requirements

Everything that determines whether LayerSync will run on your machine, and how it behaves once it does.

• No Microsoft Excel installation required — LayerSync reads and writes .xlsx directly with its own engine (ClosedXML), so it works on a machine that has AutoCAD but not Office.
• Clean Up covers PURGE only. AUDIT isn't part of it — the AutoCAD .NET API has no equivalent that can run against a background drawing.
• Windows 10/11, 64-bit only.
• Requires a licensed, full version of AutoCAD (2021–2027). AutoCAD LT is not supported — LT can't run the background automation LayerSync depends on.
• If more than one AutoCAD version is installed, pick which one to use under Settings → AutoCAD, or leave it on "Auto (newest installed)" — if that version fails to load for any reason, it falls back to another installed version automatically.
• Built on .NET 8. If the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime isn't already on your machine, the installer prompts to fetch it from Microsoft (free, one-time, roughly 60 MB).
• Network access is used to check your license at startup and periodically afterward and, only if you opt in, to send anonymous usage statistics (see the Privacy Policy). Scanning, reading and writing all happen locally through AutoCAD's own engine — no drawing content is ever uploaded.
• Interface language: English / 简体中文 / 繁體中文 / 日本語 / 한국어 / Deutsch / Français / Italiano / Español.
• Batches of many files can process several drawings in the background in parallel — tune "Max parallel AutoCAD instances" in Settings to trade speed for CPU/memory headroom.
• Every long-running action shows a progress bar with a percentage and estimated time remaining, and can be canceled mid-run.
• Settings → Diagnostics → Open Log Folder gets you straight to the host and plugin logs if something needs troubleshooting.

See also the site-wide system requirements page comparing all tools.