Starting with a Blank Canvas

If you do want to use your own layer standard, text style, blocks and linetypes in your Civil 3D template and want to avoid issues with not being able to purge undesirable, existing content out of your template file, I always suggest that people create their template from acad.dwt. This will provide you with an empty file. You can then use Design Center to bring in your standards. However, there are some issues to be aware of before you start your customization:

Standard Styles are not at Ground Zero
The components in the Standard styles are set to use layer “0”, but are configured with color overrides and linetypes set to byblock. If you try to create a new style at the object level, your new style will be produced with the same settings. It would be ideal if colors and linetypes were both set to bylayer. If it were at least so in the Standard styles, we could create new styles with a copy with “Ground Zero” configuration.

Ambient, Feature & Command Settings
Always start at Drawing Settings and work your way down. If you examine the Ambient Settings tab in the Drawing Settings dialog, you’ll find that precisions for each of the units may not suit you. In addition, overrides have been placed for you. Personally, I like to have total command over the overrides so I kill them at the drawing level and reconfigure units, formats and precisions to my standards. Then I visit Feature Settings and Command Settings in case there are overrides I want to make in a particular area.

Label Style Defaults
There are some settings and overrides issues here as well. Killing the overrides at this level, setting the default orientation reference to “View”, and configuring text style and height will allow you to start dictating label standards at higher levels in your template. Make any adjustments on these settings at lower levels keeping in mind the Civil 3D hierarchy of settings.

The Standard text style is configured into all of the label settings and styles in the acad.dwt template. If you are open to using a text style called “Standard” as your standard with your preferred font settings, the modifications will be inherited in the labels, tables and views therefore cutting out a good amount of work. Although text style can be overridden at the drawing level for labels, view styles and table styles require that you open up each and make those changes.

In Conclusion
Addressing these issues will get you a “Ground Zero” template providing you a blank canvas to start your work. But you’ll get there faster if you download the following file in which all of these issues have already been addressed. C3D2009_Ground_Zero.DWT

Enjoy!