It's unfortunate that you wanting to avoid using LISP for the layer control you seem to be asking for. Autolay is a very useful tool. It can be configured to capture any command line entry and, as I recall, it caught menu and button use as well. A program I use at work already has a variation of autolay built into it so I haven't used that routine in years. Like spaend had said in an earlier post, there are plenty of examples of the use of reactors and others tools that would be useful in accomplishing what you're asking.