Starting with layers (includes finding the current layer name)

Thought I'd add a few related articles today all about layers. I'll post them in separate articles so they don't get all mixed together.

It is a very wise idea to only have one open transaction at any time so most of the functions I post from now on will accept a transaction or a database object, among other things, as arguments.

Finding the current layer's name:

  Public Function GetCurrentLayerName(ByRef oDb As Database, _

                                      ByRef oTrans As Transaction) As String

    ' Create a layer object

    Dim oLayer As DatabaseServices.LayerTableRecord

 

    ' Set our return value to nothing

    Dim retVal As String = Nothing

 

    Try

      ' Check if the layer exists...

      oLayer = CType(oTrans.GetObject(oDb.Clayer, OpenMode.ForRead), LayerTableRecord)

 

      ' Return the current layer name

      retVal = oLayer.Name

    Catch ex As System.Exception

      MsgBox(ex.Message, MsgBoxStyle.Information, "Error in GetCurrentLayerName")

    End Try

 

    Return retVal

  End Function

Passing in the active database object and a transaction object, oDb.Clayer returns the current layer's object id so we need to do a GetObject on it to return the actual layer entity. Once we have it we simply check the name property.