AUTODESK CIVIL 3D CAD MANAGER’S GUIDE
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Label styles also have a parent-child relationship that
merits more understanding for a CAD manager directing
the deployment across a production team. The parent-
child relationship in Civil 3D acts much as it does in
standard AutoCAD dimensions. The child inherits all the
properties and functionality of the parent, but allows for
changes at its own level. This concept is important
because it can be used to quickly and simply modify a
large number of labels depending on client or agency
CAD standards.
Developing Styles
Civil 3D ships with several templates for designs using both imperial and metric units.
These templates represent typical use cases in the land development field. In addition to
ByLayer and ByStyle templates, Civil 3D 2007 includes some requested and more
expansive templates. They are as follows (with references to imperial and metric for
clarity):
• NCS Base: This template contains a basic style for every
element, and little else. It is designed for the CAD
manager who wants to build from scratch with little
overhead. This template should be used only by
experienced Civil 3D users because there is little material
in the template file to modify.
• NCS Classic: This template contains styles that reflect
the built-in appearance of the Autodesk Land Desktop
program. This template allows a user to move easily to
Civil 3D and get acceptable results quickly and easily.
• NCS Extended: This template contains multiple styles for
almost every Civil 3D object. The variety of use cases
and permutations in this template makes it a good place
to start. The less experienced CAD manager can use it to
explore how styles and labels are built. Plus it gives more
experienced CAD managers a wide variety of use cases.
This template is the most fleshed out.
By using one of these templates as a starting point, you can begin to understand the
wealth of display and labeling options that Civil 3D offers.
The templates that come with Civil 3D provide many styles that work out of the box with
little customization. In addition, they provide a large repertoire of samples that CAD
managers who want a more custom approach can modify. Creating styles is an important
part of managing the product during a successful deployment. Consideration should be
given to how your firm will develop its catalog of styles. Two approaches can be taken:
bringing in outside help, or doing the work in-house. The merits of both are discussed in
the following section.
Bringing in Outside Help
Outside help, whether resellers, professional consultants, or even temporary technicians,
can help alleviate the pressure on a CAD manager to create and understand styles, while
maintaining an existing system and in many cases remaining billable. (For the sake of
