users, I asked a question on controlling individual layers in a diagram and with a bit more knowledge and help from the answers I can see the question was too broad. I suspect that the method you use produce the diagram will probably depend on whether you want the diagram for a presentation (the beamer answer is appropriate) or an ebook (the answer for animate is probably better, along the lines of my first attempt at this) or even on the web (a problem for another time).
My thought is that I should ask a particular question for each of the particular end points, then maybe a person of status can move/duplicate the answers to their rightful contexts.
I've looked at this meta question on asking a follow-up question but I'm not sure if it endorses what I think I should do in this particular case. I hope that with some help I can make the discussion around my question easy to find and use for particular queries.
beamerandebooksolutions, and tag the question appropriately, but otherwise leave it as it is.beamersolution most helpful, you can accept that answer, but the other answer has plenty of votes and is just as likely to be useful to others. And your comments about the differences are helpful too.