Start with the template, not the drawing

Most of the time we lose on a project is not spent drawing — it's spent deciding. Which layer does this wall go on? What text height should a general note be? Why does this dimension look nothing like the one on the sheet next door? Multiply those small decisions by a few thousand objects and you have the quiet reason why a Friday deadline feels tight.

The fix is unglamorous but effective: build a template file that already knows the answers, and never start a drawing from a blank screen again. Set it up once, refine it twice a year, and it will pay for itself on the first job.

Choose one layer naming convention and stick to it

Layer names are the filing system for everything you draw. If they drift, so does your ability to control visibility, plot style and selection. Pick a structure, write it down in a one-page standard, and apply it without exception.

A workable UK pattern for architecture and engineering is [Discipline]-[Element]-[Modifier], all capitals, hyphens as separators, no spaces and no personal initials:

• A-WALL-EXT — architectural, external wall
• S-BEAM-STL — structural, steel beam
• M-DUCT-SUP — mechanical, supply duct
• E-LITE-CEIL — electrical, ceiling light

For refurbishment work, add a status suffix so existing and new fabric never get confused: -EXST, -DEMO, -NEW. Wildcards then become genuinely useful — an A-WALL-* filter or a *-DEMO layer state lets you isolate every demolished element in two clicks. Standards such as BS EN ISO 13567 and ISO 19650 give you a fuller framework if you want to align with a client's exchange requirements, but the principle is simply consistency.

Build a template that carries your standards

A template is more than a title block on a sheet. It should contain every reusable asset your office relies on, loaded and ready:

• Layers — the full set, pre-named, pre-coloured, with lineweights assigned by layer rather than by object.
• Title blocks — as blocks with attributes for sheet number, revision, date, drawn-by and scale, placed at 1:1 in paper space in A1, A0 and A3 sizes.
• Layouts — a set of named tabs with viewports pre-scaled and labelled, so a new sheet is a copy, not a construction job.
• Blocks and symbols — door swings, section markers, grid bubbles, north points, level tags, revision clouds.
• Text and dimension styles — created up front, not borrowed from whichever file you happened to open.

Keep the template lean. A bloated file with thousands of unused blocks slows every opening and hides the tools you actually need. Purge it before you save.

Text styles, dimension styles and annotation scale

Set text height to 0 in the style definition and control height per annotation instead — that way styles are reusable at any size. For engineering lettering, an ISO 3098-compliant font gives a clean, plotted result; for general notes, a plain sans-serif such as Arial is fine. Avoid an assortment of exotic TrueType fonts: they bloat files and behave unpredictably when plotted.

Dimension styles deserve the same care. Most offices need at least two: an architectural style with tick or oblique marks for building work, and an engineering style with filled arrows for detail and fabrication drawings. Set the primary units to millimetres with zero decimal places, define your extension line offsets, and assign the text style inside the dimension style rather than overriding it later. Use annotative dimensioning, or a saved set of scale-specific styles, so text and arrows stay legible whether you plot at 1:50 or 1:5.

Lineweights, plot styles and viewport control

Assign lineweights by layer — 0.13, 0.18, 0.25, 0.35, 0.50, 0.70 and so on — and leave individual objects alone. A named plot style table or a carefully documented colour table then handles screening: existing fabric at 30 per cent, demolished work dashed and greyed, new work full weight. Keep a separate table for monochrome printing, and test both on a real sheet before the first issue.

Save layer states as you go. A concept state that hides services and dimensions, a planning state with everything on, and a construction state with a reduced layer set will save you repeatedly rebuilding the same visibility combinations.

Keep the template alive

Nominate one person to own the template and store it in a single, known location. Log the version in the title block so you can tell at a glance which standard a drawing was produced under. Review it after each project: if you built the same layer or dimension style three times, it belongs in the template.

Do that, and starting a new drawing becomes the fastest part of the job rather than the slowest.