We decided to run a few tests with drawings to find out whether the AutoCAD Civil 3D template could improve the performance of Civil 3D. The drawings were based on the following templates:
acadiso.dwt
AutoCAD Civil 3D (Metric) NCS.dwt
Devotech RSA 2022.dwt
The tests were done in Civil 3D 2022, acadiso.dwt 2022 and AutoCAD Civil 3D (Metric) NCS 2022. The Devotech template originates from an older acadiso.dwt version. It was upgraded to Civil 3D 2022.
We performed a few tasks with the corridors, and then we ran one test with the pipe network. Each task was timed (the provided results are in seconds).
We thought that acadiso.dwt will perform the best as it is the lightest of the tested templates. The differences were rather marginal and could be caused by the complexity of the labels (we did not use the same label sets in each drawing because we did not want to meddle with the provided template styles).
The table below shows the results of our testing:
Conclusion
Based on our testing, it seems that the Civil 3D template does not have a noticeable impact on the Civil 3D performance, and in some cases, an older, properly developed template can perform slightly better than the default Autodesk templates.
Note
Our testing focused purely on the performance of Civil 3D, and not on the stability of the drawing (fatal errors, unexpected behaviours).
Our testing was not very rigorous, we would need to measure each task a few times and then calculate the average. We should test other Civil 3D objects such as grading objects, feature lines and others. And finally, we should test what impact different labels have (we know that labels are quite heavy for Civil 3D).
Tip
If you want to improve the performance of your template, you can consider using default styles with as simplistic labels as possible (which might not be practical sometimes - there is always a trade-off).