Its easy to get caught in a trap and model yourself into a corner in SW, especially if you buy into all of the methods they demonstrate and teach for making links between files. If you're a super expert, you can sometimes get yourself out of some of these tangles without having to redo everything, but there is a lot of model rebuilding going on.

I'm curious about how many of you have an actual structured method for building models, creating links between documents, in-context methods, and parent/child relations in general. I've been reading and writing about John Stoltzfus's SSP, about Gebhard's RMS, and other methods like what Pro/E people used to teach in the early 90s, and Horizontal modeling, skeleton and master modeling.

Do you follow some process that is formally documented, or follow it informally? Do you just rely on your wits to get out of any bind you create? Do you destroy all of the intelligence in your model at the end of a project (break all links)? Do you have formally structured best practice documents that you follow and are enforced, or are you less rigid about it? If you have success or failure with your method, please describe.