My lesson of the day for Civil 3D is customization of the CUI.  If you’ve ever tried to create a stock CUI file in a different location be sure to take the *.dll file associated with it in order to keep you icons from disappearing.  I.E.  if you copy the civil.cui to another folder for a company CAD Standard copy the civil.dll, civil.mnl, & civil.mnr files as well to prevent the headaches I’ve had recently.