Merging AutoCAD Layers Question

by Eric F
(Wisconsin)

Hello, I have been trying for a long time to figure out this problem. I have a big layout for our company's plant in AutoCAD, which I inherited from someone else.

Every little thing is on its own layer, much of which is pointless, so I wanted to merge things to result in less layers.

I am using the LAYMRG command to do the merging but since all colors were set to BYLAYER beforehand, they all switch to the color of the new layer that they are merged to.

There are literally hundreds of layers so the QSELECT method is very slow to use and not always correct in finding things by layer so I wanted to know if there is a good command, or a few, to help make what I want happen.

Thanks for any help in advance.