Templates are special projects that you can use to store your favorite content. Templates create a 1-click access point to your organisation’s metrics, standards, and data.
Templates include:
Data layers
Drawing layers: these come across empty, because geometry isn't copied
Layer Groups
Layer visibility and opacity
Usages: every usage in the project, with its settings
Property Definitions: the properties set up in the project, without their values
Flows: every flow definition in the project
Blocks: every block definition in the template's Block Manager
Categories
Measures
Tabs
Split Display
Scenarios: these come across empty, because geometry isn't copied
Units (meters or feet)
Currency symbol
Gross, net, saleable, and floor space ratio area acronyms
Basemap style
CRS (the coordinate system for import and export)
Lineage (a record of the project's history, used for auditing and versioning)
Apps: the apps added to the project, with their defaults (like report templates)
Layouts (v6+): your panel arrangements
Templates do not include:
Geometry
Workspace property values
Views or Scenes
Templates and content packs
A template and a content pack both save your standard content so you can reuse it. They differ in when you use them and what they carry.
A template starts a new project. When you create a project from a template, Giraffe copies the whole template project into it. That includes usages, blocks, analytics, property definitions, flows, layers, apps, layouts, and project defaults such as units. Use a template to give every new project the same starting point.
A content pack adds content to a project you already have. You add a pack from the Content Library at any time. Its layers, usages, blocks, flows, analytics, apps, and layouts merge into the open project, and your existing content stays. Use a pack for a set of tools you only need on some projects, or to bring new content into a project that is already underway.
A content pack can't carry project defaults, such as units. If every project should start with a setting, put it in a template.
Neither one stays linked to the projects that used it. Changes you make to a template or a pack later only reach new projects, or projects you add the pack to again.