Many times, I come across users who create Civil 3D styles that have layers, colors, line types, line weights, and/or plot styles directly assigned within their Civil 3D styles. While these styles are certainly required in many cases, other cases could benefit from styles created in a method that maximizes their functionality while minimizing the number of styles needed.
While creating Civil 3D styles, if the only change needed between styles are layers or properties, it may be more advantageous to create one style that could be used on different layers taking on those layer’s properties, rather than creating a new style for each layer.
Creating Civil 3D styles utilizing layer 0 allows the created object to be put on any layer and take on those layer properties rather than being static in nature, provided that the component properties are set to ByLayer or ByBlock.
Creating Civil 3D styles with component properties set to ByBlock allows for those properties to be assigned to the object directly via the properties palette, overriding layer properties.
This allows for the creation of Civil 3D styles, such as labels or feature lines, where object properties such as color, line weight, line type, and/or plot style take on those properties based on the layer that the object is on. This is helpful, for example, when denoting non-shaded proposed objects versus shaded existing objects Another example would be creating a feature line style that can change the look based on the layer it is on, making it extremely useful for corridor feature lines that can be added to layers.
In conclusion, adding styles to your template that can take on layer properties can help keep your overall number of styles down while maintaining functionality.
Examples showing three objects, one style, different properties:
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