Just finished working with 1 drawing that was used for 4 different procedure / reasons.
1. Patent black lines only.
2. Colour and materials applied
3. Reports/paperspace to pdf file ( to keep the file size down from previous items and secure, did crash a few times along the way. Most likely my fault sometimes, other times I reckon it was genie! )
4. Animation as a separate file only, not complete

The reason I did it this way to overcome any windows/tcw crashes and risk losing too much work.

Is there a better way?
If so what is it?   

Layer sets wont solve this situation, unless Ive got it wrong. Layer sets would work but that would mean having 3 sets of each object to which I see would make the file just way too large in size. Anyone got any ideas?

If you've convinced yourself that TC's going to fail you somehow, but these differences are only in presentation, not content, and the content is presumably completed, what's the ideological opposition to using copies of the same file?       

Hey Murray what I didnt add in there was Windows 10, point is Im presuming that weve all had crashs etc and Im just trying to be prudent based on experience. Loosing work is not cool and protecting my dam hard work is the best way to go for me.

My work is essentially done with some minor documentation changes and improving some plans and reports, thats exactly what I did was to make copies of the files so that I could achieve my goals ( list of requirements ) and only wished there was a better way. Hence asking the question is there a better way, productivity is what Im after if it can be achieved. So I looked at Later sets and was asking the question to understand if others had any ideas as Im sure this has occurred tp others is there a better way. If not then I will stick with copies!.   

Should have mentioned that there a large list of logged Windows update errors that I only discovered today, this is most likely the cause of crashs, not tcw. For the last year TurboCAD 2017 PP has been very stable and a lot fun to work with. 

With regard to the different colours. I would set everything to  colour by layer.
 and use layer templates to switch between black and colour.
I work in colour because it is easier to see what I am doing but I do need gray scale drawings.
To set layer templates up,
In the layers palette ,select all the layers right click and make a template give it a name like colour -( remember to save the layer template to file because they are not saved with the drawing). Change all the layers' colour to black and make another template.

Hey Nikki I remember that you posted on layer sets somewhere recently and I havent gone to recheck that post yet. Just wondering after your post that if layer sets solve 2 of my original points then can you also use this functionality to solve the 3rd. Could it be used to add materials in the 3rd layer set and only be visible in that layer only?

Just for clarity materials added in the 3rd layer should not be visible or rendered if I only want thick lines for patent when selecting or using another layer set?