Multiple Project Template

Yes, you understand it correctly. A template is something applied to a single project. To best of my knowledge, there is no such thing as a multiple-project template. Apparently, such concept can be created and implemented using Visual Studio Extensions, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd885119.aspx[^].

The question is: why?

You should understand that Microsoft takes a great care of newbies, sometimes even at the expense of effectiveness of work of experienced developers. A template is a typical example of this. Project templates greatly facilitate the beginner, but really experienced developers could easily develop projects and solutions without those templates. Just the opposite: templates present some minor hassles in developing solutions which are far from available templates. I, for example, start from deleting a good half of staff from a project created from a template before adding some very different stuff.

So, what's the problem with your 3-tier solutions? I don't see a problem. Need a template? Create some skeleton solution of 3-tier architecture assembled from all the layers you need in such skeleton. Remove anything which is not common to all the solutions you want to use from your template. Link projects of the solution with proper project dependencies (Visual Studio will do it automatically if you reference projects by "Projects", not by "Browse", which relies on main executable modules of the assemblies.) Done? Now save it in your Revision Control System's code base and say: this is my template.

(By the way, do yourself a great favor: if you're not using any Revision Control System, stop even playing with the idea of continuing your development without one — don't risk your work and just don't be silly. Such systems can be free, Open Source, very lean, well-supported and extremely reliable.)

OK, now, when you need to create a new solution of this type "from template", manually copy you "template" solution, rename it and start adding some "meat" to your skeleton. And now, ask yourself: why would you need any templates at the level of Visual Studio? Just to look like a newbie? Don't worry, you can always achieve that :-). You do not live on mercy of Microsoft or third parties; you can easily refine your "templates", create different variants of those, change them, etc. Freedom is more important than a illusory "cool" staff created for you by a big brother. And you have nothing to loose.

—SA