The way I see it there are a few options to hide a surface in Autocad 2014 so you can work on line work without snapping to every nearest contour.
-select surface, right click, select "hide objects"
-change surface style to "no display"
-turn off layer that surface resides on
Which do you prefer? Why? Is one better than another for any reason?
I use a "No Display" style quick and painless!!
I just turn it off. I also almost always have the "replace z value with current" box checked under options/drafting - unless I'm drawing breaklines or something.
I just turn the layer off. Once it's created I have very little need to see it again. Never really had a problem with that solution.
No display. If you turn the surface layer off, the hover to get elevation won't work, which I like to use sometimes. I'm guessing that there are other functions that won't work when you turn it off, though those are probably enginerding functions, that I don't typically use.