There are NO "official stances" against ANYTHING that NX is CAPABLE of doing (you're right in the sense that if we DIDN'T want you to do something, we would NOT let you do it), but there are recommendations and 'best practices'.
Prior to the introduction of Arrangements, using Reference Sets was an option used by most people, but since there are issues which can arise from doing this some additional work was done and thus was born Arrangements (they addressed a few other issues as well).
Now in keeping with our longstanding philosophy, even if we introduce something which is now the 'recommended approach' we very seldom disable the older practice that the newer function was designed to replace since many customer may have already implemented workflows based on the older tools and since these workflows are still technically usable and if they were willing and able to live with the weaknesses in the past and feel tha they can continue to do so, who are we to say that they must stop using UG/NX in that way. Granted, there are exceptions to this, but generally they are only taken when we're able to convert/translate the old mechanism into the new one, such as was done when we finally removed support for creating/editing 'Mating Conditions' and provided a means to convert them into 'Assembly Constraints'. And even then, we provided full support for both approaches for several releases before making the final transition (which occurred starting with NX 7.5).
Now in that case of Components managed by Reference Sets, since Reference Sets themselves are NOT going away, it's highly unlikely that we will ever remove support for Components. However, that does not mean that we will encourage their use or even suggest it when we feel that other schemes, such as Arrangements, are better suited.
So the bottom line is that if you're willing to accept the fact that there may come a point where you run into a situation where the Reference Set approach limited what you could do or caused you to have to do some rework to get them to behave as you need them to, that you'll be willing accept the fact that if you were to again ask for help, that the reply may once again be that you should have looked at using something like Arrangements in the first place and that we are NOT open to making further changes to Reference Sets to overcome these Component-related issues, then be our guest...
But remember, you've been warned ;-)
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
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