Is the NCS your best friend?

Maybe since the NCS is an organization related to what we all do for a living, this is not appropriate for the forum?

I'm trying to set-up standards for a small firm and would like to try and talk my employer into purchasing a copy of the NCS. I want to find out from the experienced whether it is generally considered to be worth it's price or, something that should be skipped?

I want to setup a symbology [block] library, layers, plot line weights, dimensioning styles, etc. Are these topics all covered in the NCS for different disciplines?

Well, not really gold, but if your industry involves moving data to/from subs or other outside organizations, then sure, the NCS is worthwhile.

Layering is pretty basic, and if that's what you want I hope you're an architect. Civil layering is .... limited. Plotting changed quite a bit from the earlier versions to the current v4 NCS. The model is not color-to-weight, but rather relative line weights, from XXFine to XXXHeavy. And they are not going to try and tell you what layers belong with what lineweight. (Not possible!! I'll display the same layer in the same set of drawings in multiple weights and screens, depending on what I'm trying to communicate on the different sheets/viewports)

Basic symbology is there, but I don't recall any discussion of dimension styles or appearances offhand... The Uniform Drawing system is there, and quite helpful in setting up sets of contract drawings sheets. As well as a good listing of standard abbreviations.

Come to think of it, since it's now an electronic download, it weighs nothing, so has to be worth more than its weight in gold.;)

If you are going to share your files with other firms, or provide drawings that match client's standards, you are going to need to have the NCS. Many owners are requiring drawings that are at least based on some version of the NCS so if you do not have a copy of that you are going to struggle.