New in the United States National CAD Standard®–V5

Released in May 2011, NCS V5 provides the following improvements:

Online document accessible 24/7 to licensees of the standard making it easier to navigate and implement the standard.
Expanded and reorganized CAD Layer Guidelines includes:
- New Discipline Designators for Distributed Energy.
- New Level 2 Resource Discipline Designator for "Real Estate".
- New "Abandoned" Status Field.
- Expanded Discipline Designators for "Survey/Mapping".
- New Major and Minor Groups definitions added to the "Architectural, Electrical, Fire Protection, Interior, Mechanical, Plumbing, Resource, Structural, and Telecommunications Layer Lists".
- Revised flow of CAD Layer Guidelines Module to clarify that the Layer Lists by Disciplines are simply examples of some of the commonly used layers and not an all-inclusive list of layers.
- Major and Minor Groups definitions from "Civil, Electrical, Mechanical, Plumbing, Resource, Structural, Survey/Mapping, and Telecommunications Layer Lists" made more generic to allow broader usage.
- Expanded allowable file extension characters to 4 characters to respond to changes in software application file extensions.
Updated Uniform Drawing System includes:
- New reference symbols for "interior elevation indicator single and multiple views", "azimuth indicator" and "3/32" architectural scale".
- Revised line thickness of "note leaders" reference symbol.
- New line symbol for "electrical direct current".
- New identity symbol for "electrical interconnections with substations" and "electrical photovoltaic power".
Appendixes:
- New Implementation Guidelines with clear phased approaches from management buy-in to establishing an employee training plan. And,
- Eliminated obsolete "Appendix C, G and H".