Sheets don't reflect changes to intermediate or master files. - Levels on/off not updating.

I have seen similar questions but the answers all seem to be ridiculous workarounds. It seems like the solution should be simple and straight forward and that makes me think that we are all missing something.

For my project, I set up several “master” files. These include a TOPO, UTILITY and also a CIVIL file. In the end, I need a set of sheets for both the demolition and improvement plan sets.

I set up two “intermediate” files, one for the demolition and one for the improvement, in order that I could set up the individual files to look the way I want all of the sheets to look (layers on/off, line styles and colors).

The intermediate files directly reference the TOPO, UTILITY and CIVIL files.

The sheets each reference the respective intermediate file but this is a nested reference as there isn’t actually any line work on the intermediate (this case “8511_ROAD – IMP.dgn”) files.

All seemed to be going well until I needed to make some changes (including a level name change) in one of the master files and also turn on some referenced levels in one of the sheet files.

No matter what I do in the intermediate file, I can’t get the changes I make to reflect in the sheet files. The only solution seems to be to recreate all of my sheet files from scratch every time I need to make a change.

How do I set up the sheet references so that the levels, colors and Line weights reflect the settings and changes in the intermediate files? How do I set up my sheets so that all the demolition sheets look the same and all the improvement sheets look the same?