Thanks for the overview of the layout/notebook, David. Alas... I am still a core Creo owner and have no plans to upgrade. However, in the investigation of finding out if I have notebook, it turns out somehwere there is a manufacturing lite extension in core Creo. That I'm going to have to investigate.
Obviously I am not familiar enough with the AAX terminology to understand exactly what is what. I use the term skeleton in a very loose sense. In general, I am not a proponent for a top-down assembly file structure going into production. Maybe it is possible to make this feasible for long term sustaining of a design. Without more insight, I wouldn't know. I haven't worked on anything complex enough to require this. However, I do have master parameters that I have to adhere to throughout my design process. Creating these pseudo sketleton models that eventually have all their dependencies removed has worked well for now.
Maybe need a new user trademark.. PoorMan's|Pro^tm to encompass core Creo Pro|WorkAround^tm for not having all the tools available.