The Draft Layer, your sketching ninja

Draft settings allow for your output to omit layers set as Draft, essentially what you don't want to show in your final product, unless you want it to for some preview.

Within your export settings, Draft becomes an option in the output fields. It is unselect by default, but you can enable it if you need to.

Draft layers are not affected by Clipping layers. This disables the clipping mode, as evident from the greyed sidebar that should normally be red when set as Clipping.

Layer management such as Merge visible layers and Merge visible to new layer(X) will omit draft layers by default. With Merge visible layers, all layers but Draft layers will combine together. Your Draft layers will still exist, but not be merged at all with the rest. When using a Merge visible to new layer, it will simply ignore all the draft layers, showing you the work as if you've turned off those layers.

When attempting to layer manage with merge on a draft layer, the options will be greyed out and will not be available to select.

Clipping layers cannot simultaneously be set as Draft, however, you can still manage your drafts into a group folder and set the group to Clipping mode. When managed in this way, the draft layers will act both in clipping format and still be acknowledged as their Draft setting parameters define them to be.

Drafting With Purpose

Drafting can have many levels and stages. Being able to see our draft guides us to defining the final linework that will be put to use.

You can even set a Reference layer as a Draft layer, combining their settings to create incognito reference frames with various layer modes you can apply to make their utility more visible.

Being able to draw perfectly on every stroke may not be a skill that everyone is born with, so drafting becomes useful and it can save us time in the long run when we can start off with rough sketching to acquire the proportions and or gesture we aim for, generally started from a zoomed out view as we step back to see the whole picture. Each draft layer becomes more refined, making the process guided and efficient.

 

Not everyone may use Draft layers, but it has its purpose, try it out and have some fun. Who knows, maybe it will improve your own process.