Autodesk Civil 3D 2016 ships with layers that are assigned through styles to specific definitions (arcs and tangents) within components like alignments.

The Autodesk template was created using American conventions, and users worldwide have since adopted these as a basis for their own templates. To facilitate understanding, memorizing and expanding the AutoCAD Civil 3D 2016 template layers, property filters can be created mimicking the Autodesk naming convention, exposing the logical system. To this end, find attached a modified South African template (taken from the Autodesk country kit), in which these filters have been applied. It serves as a good basis to create one’s own template from.

In Civil 3D workspace, on the home tab, click the icon shown below to display the layer properties manager.

To create a new layer properties filter RMC on the branch, create a new filter then set the name and name properties to display the logical name structure (Autodesk has conveniently named the layers hierarchically).

Note that nested filters (nodes) display in the tree structure and that they further filter the branch filter they appear on. Other properties may also be defined in the filter if needed.

AutoCAD Civil 3D 2016 allows one to save or import Layer Filter Groups! This is a welcome feature that is glaringly absent from AutoCAD 2016 (one has to define the layer filters in the template or programmatically add it).

Now it is an easy task to assign one’s own custom layers to elements defining objects. Layer management in Autodesk AutoCAD Civil 3D 2016 is an absolute pleasure!