Template Recommendations

[rondKVWTH]

Good Afternoon All - 

I recently took another Surveying position at a new, larger firm.  Their in-house guys are in the middle of re-organizing their Civil 3D standards.  I have created templates prior and was a little surprised by the attempt at making 1 template for the entire company (Civil, Surveying, Planning & Environmentalists) across all professions.  Now we have over 800 layers in every single drawing, including Surveys.  Lets not even think about the issues of xref layer management...

My question is:  Does Autodesk recommend this for the Civil / Surveying?  If anyone is using this single template process, can you share your feedback?  I'd also like to get some opinions from you gurus / C3D wiz-kids (i.e. John Mayo, etc.)

Thank you in advance.

Sincerely,

Ron Dalton

[_Hathaway]

That's what we do. One template for the company and we do roads, water, sewer, parks and surveying.  I think in a perfect world you could have individual templates but they would each need to be constantly updated by someone to maintain consistency across the team.  This is almost an impossible task for all but the largest of firms that have people solely dedicated to this.  That is not us!

We use the layer filters and honestly it hasn't been a huge deal at all.  

[rl_jackson]

We did discipline specific templates with the V- and C- designations. (i.e. One for design, one for survey.)

[Joe-Bouza]

Layer Filters.

I get the concern over layer number but to me managing layers is more efficient then managing 10 dwt files

[rondKVWTH]

Do you do Civil work?

[rondKVWTH]

I would like to introduce 2 templates.  1 for Civil & 1 for Surveying.

It would cut down on the number of layers, blocks and set-up data.

Thanks for the reply! 

[Joe-Bouza]

To me that makes sense. We only do design work.

[CahaLF7RX]

hello again!

the company i work for has multiple c3d templates.

due to multiple civil disciplines and offices in different states.

we also have a blank template, it just has Layer 0 and defpoints.

great for starting detail sheets, construction notes

good luck,

nonbeard13

[brian.strandberg]

 I love having a blank template very functional for several issues.

We also have what we call 'Reference Templates'.  These are items we may need in some rare situations.  A good example is most jurisdictions use Pipe Lengths/slopes based on Center of Structure to Center of the next structure.  We also have a few jurisdictions which require inside to inside. So those styles alone are in their own template.  Typically we would add those to an existing project by using the import styles and settings command.

[sfore]

I've built templates since Civil 3D's inception back in 2006. One thing I've consistently done since then is build and manage 1 Design Template. I've played around with different Layer names and discipline designators throughout the years but pretty much I've settled with the NCS Layer Standards and utilize C- and V- along with 4 digit major and minor groups for layer names. Our template has 514 layers. To combat the number of layers, I simply use Layer filters, as shown in the pic. In my opinion, I think its much easier to manage 1 design template rather than multiple design templates, especially when it comes to migrating versions. My company is a multi-discipline firm with multiple offices. When I make a change to the template, I simply sync up the other offices with the latest template. I also build and maintain Plan Production Templates and Border Templates, but that's simply for sheeting purposes. Also, I have a pretty extensive Parts List with custom parts inside our template as well as hundreds of figure styles, point styles, point label styles, plus description key sets. The template file size is 1,648 kb.

[Joe-Bouza]

DITTO

[rondKVWTH]

I've noticed you said '1 design template'.

My question is: have you separated the Survey template from the Design template?

Thanks

-Ron

[tcarcamoEQSFT]

Hi. I have been building C3D templates since 2006 and I never recommend have one master template for Civil and survey dept. I always keep those 2 files separate. Me personally, I don't like getting into drawing that has over 500 layers and 50 different styles and labels styles for everything. That is just not efficient when users have to scroll through endless amounts of styles when designing. Majority of the time the survey dept never ever wants the civil team in their survey template drawing.  In addition, minimize the number of Xref drawing attachments and also data shortcuts. Some ppl just gets too carried away having so much objects data shortcut into each plan sheet then they complain why it takes 3-5 minutes to open drawing or why items are not syncing. I like to keep things as simple as possible.  At my consulting company I'm creating custom company templates monthly. This month I'm working on 4 different new engineering templates. Message me if you would like to have a conversation. 

[tony1978]

Hi. I have been building C3D templates since 2006 and I never recommend have one master template for Civil and survey dept. I always keep those 2 files separate. Me personally, I don't like getting into drawing that has over 500 layers and 50 different styles and labels styles for everything. That is just not efficient when users have to scroll through endless amounts of styles when designing. Majority of the time the survey dept never ever wants the civil team in their survey template drawing.  In addition, minimize the number of Xref drawing attachments and also data shortcuts. Some ppl just gets too carried away having so much objects data shortcut into each plan sheet then they complain why it takes 3-5 minutes to open drawing or why items are not syncing. I like to keep things as simple as possible.  At my consulting company I'm creating custom company templates monthly. This month I'm working on 4 different new engineering templates. Message me if you would like to have a conversation. 

[rfazio2KCAQ]

I have been working as a CAD manager and designer for more than 30 years and I would not recommend that.

I break my templates for civil/survey into the following:

Existing Features

Proposed Features

Proposed Grading

Proposed Landscape

Erosion Control

I then use these files to create my plan sheets by cross referencing the ones i need for that plan.

Simple and clean.