To Work With Reference Templates

You can keep the Autodesk Civil 3D styles, settings, layers and other standard components in your drawings up to date by using reference templates.

To link a drawing to reference templates

You can link a drawing to one or more reference templates to keep the styles, settings, layers and other standard components in the drawing up to date.

Note: You can set up a reference template using the Set Reference Template Defaults command.

1. Click Manage tab Styles panel Reference Find.
2. In the Attach Referenced Template dialog box, click Attach a New Template .
3. In the Open Template File dialog box, select one or more DWG or DWT files to attach and click OK.

   When you attach a template, the lower panel of the dialog box is expanded automatically so you can review the components that are selected and make changes if needed.

   If you set up a reference template using the Set Reference Template Defaults command, only the components that were selected in the reference template are displayed.

4. Select or clear the tick boxes to change what is referenced into the drawing from the attached reference template.
5. If you attach more than one template, specify the priority by using the Move Up and Move Down buttons. The template at the top of the list has priority.
   Note: When you attach an additional reference template to a drawing, it is added to the top of the list of templates which means it has the highest priority. In the lower panel of the dialogue box, warning symbols and tooltips are displayed on components if duplicates are found in another reference template. For more information about managing duplicates, see To Set up a Reference Template.
6. Click Apply to load the templates and to apply the settings.

   Components in the reference templates are copied into the drawing. If a component in the drawing has the same name as a component in a reference template, the component in the drawing is overwritten.

To control automatic updates from reference templates

Use the AeccRefTemplateAutoUpdate variable to control updates and alerts when reference templates change.

1. At the Command line, enter AeccRefTemplateAutoUpdate.
2. Enter one of the following:
   • 0: Turns off automatic updates. Notifications are displayed to alert you when reference template components need to be updated.
   • 1: Turns on automatic updates of components from reference templates. This is the default setting.
   • 2: Turns off updates of existing layers only. Existing layers in the host drawing are not updated automatically and they are not updated if you click Apply or OK in the Attach Referenced Template dialog box.
     Note: When using this value, existing layers in the host drawings are not overridden by layers in the reference template. New layers that are referenced by styles or settings in the template are referenced into host drawings, but if existing layers are in the host drawings, those existing layers are not overridden.

To manually update drawings from reference templates

If you turned off automatic updates by setting the AeccRefTemplateAutoUpdate system variable value to 0, you can manually update drawings with changes to styles in attached reference templates.

1. Click Manage tab Styles panel Reference Find.
2. In the Attach Referenced Template dialog box, click Apply.

To remove unused components from a drawing

When you attach a reference template, the referenced components are copied into the drawing. You can remove unused components while still preserving the template path in the Attach Referenced Template dialog box.

1. Click Manage tab Styles panel Reference Find.
2. In the Attach Referenced Template dialog box, clear the Load tick box for the attached template.
3. Click Apply.
   • Components that have been used, such as layers, remain in the drawing. Unused components are removed from the drawing.
   • Components that have been overwritten by components in the reference template do not revert back to their original state.
Note: The drawing is not updated with changes that are made to the reference template when the Load tick box is cleared. To restore the connection to the reference template, open the Attach Referenced Template dialogue box, select the Load tick box and click Apply. This copies the components into the drawing again and updates any components in the drawing that have been changed in the template.