Assembly

I would skip the Layouts…  They just add baggage and unwanted hooks and negatively affect management and reusability.

Look at the overall objectives… and focus on what drives vs what follows - data flow is crucial. 

Always use parameters as your interface for data (numbers, int, strings) and relations to calculate or set to dimensions (never symbolic dimensions). 

If you are working with family tables, try to avoid nesting them (parts and assemblies) - and avoid using the lookup_inst function to hot swap them in (limited functionality and only accepts certain types of data) -- instead use Pro/PROGRAM variables to set instance names to load in a specific location (assuming you are trying to do this).

Skeletons are handy for a few reasons - they can define and position stable references for assembly of things, or they can be used as 3D measuring sticks to get dimensions set to parameters that you can move the value to other models for their specific regeneration to fit the required dimension in the skeleton (handy and keeps things isolated for only passing data and not bogging down the structure).

Always design for the flow of the data - avoid deep relationships that affect configuration and reuse in other models.

The master model (150% approach) works - but this is it’s own product configuration to help accelerate the generation of variant designs that don’t have all the baggage of dependencies (if you do it right).

Data flow is everything - isolated and manageable interfaces will help ensure a good structure for future managment.

Hope this helps!

Dave