Hi David, it sounds like you are currently using the Hide button under the Edit menu?

If you want to work on objects by layers rather than just all objects, you can do that by using the Scene Browser to do some hiding and showing stuff rather than the Edit > Hide button.

So say for instance you want to show all objects that have Layer (in MoI called a "Style") of Red - to do that go to the Scene browser, and click on this spot right here:



When you click there you'll see an eye icon that will turn on or off:



When the eye is showing it means that all objects that belong to that style are shown right then.

When the spot is blank with no eye showing at all, that means that all the objects that belong to that style are currently hidden, but clicking on that area will then show them.

Also if there is some mix of some objects that belong to that style are shown and some others are hidden, it will show a half eye and if you click on that it will show them all and you'll get a full eye displayed.

You can also do some other things like right-click on that spot to hide everything else other than that layer (a kind of "isolate" function), and also Ctrl+click to lock or unlock just stuff for that layer. See here for some more details on all the different actions:
http://moi3d.com/2.0/docs/moi_command_reference11.htm#scenebrowser

Hope this helps!

- Michael