Siemens NX: Managing Design Groups | OnePLM

Consider any task involving 1,000 items. You might find it easier to manage 10 groups of 100 items than one group of 1,000 items. Similarly, when you work with large models, you can use a design group as a partition or a container to organize and manage large or small numbers of features in logical groups. For example, you can organize your features into logical groups, such as: Reference geometry, Target body, Tool bodies, Booleans, Features that modify the target body.
Features in a design group exist in relative isolation, independent of features in other groups; however, a feature in a later group can reference geometry in a previous group.
Using design groups can improve software responsiveness when you work with large models because features in other design groups do not roll back or update when you make changes to a feature in the active design group. You will also see improved responsiveness when editing features in design groups while using the Model Delay and Update Granularity option to control when features update.
In the latest update to NX, design groups see an improved responsiveness and faster exploration of feature history.
What's new?
•Enhanced ease of use through Make Current Feature, Edit with Rollback, and Roll-forward.
•Make Current Feature only rolls back features within the active Design Group and does not make downstream Design Groups and features inactive.

[@spoeegi]

Very interesting workflow you show here fo the bike. I often worked similar, but were never really sure it's the proper way.
The problem for me comes when each variant of the bike (small, medium, large) needs it's separate part files and drawings. I could do this like you have shown for the first configuration, then freeze all links, save the whole assembly excluding the master part, change configuration, freeze links and so on. When changes in a specific config needs to be done, make sure the correct config is active, then unfreeze the links. This is necessary since the current configuration is saved in the master. Is there a better way to grab different configurations of the master part? Of course part families could be used, but this is more rigid and needs more commitment i think.
Another thing. If only a body is linked to the part file, you always lose some information. Every parameter, feature or reference geometry needed to create the body is only available if i linked separately. Ideal would be some linked features with all this info, maintaining its associativity to the master, but also can be made independant if needed. This works with sketches, buts if made independant, you loose external references. Datums can also be linked, but not made independant. It seems like linking just parameters is the most stable and flexible way. If needed sketches, datums, faces, if absolutely necessary bodies. But it's so much easier and faster to model on the go in the master part and just link bodies at the end. But in a company environment with PDM it's critical to have single part files and drawings, where a change can be made independantly without revision of the master.
In 15 years of using NX i never found a perfect solution for this. I often was forced to dumb everything down again because quick changes need to be done and the structure would become too complex, especially when working in a team or company.
Since you seem very experienced with these kind of workflows, i would love to hear your opinion on this and if you have any other solutions for the mentioned problems.
Thanks!