When creating a layout we are given the option to choose Full Score or Part and we are told that part usually refers to a single instrument. Further, we are told there are different settings for Full Score vs Part. But we are never really told what those differences are, and searching through the settings has not revealed any obvious differences. Is there someplace that lists the differences so one can make a more educated decision on which one to choose and why and what the advantages of that choice are?
There’s more detail about this in the Dorico manual: Steinberg
The basic thing though is that they just have slightly different default options set.
If you are printing the Full Score then that is used when you have multiple players and you want to see all players at once, such as for the score that a conductor would have, or a PVG (piano, vocal, guitar) version. This will show the full instrument names on the first system and short instrument names after that. It won’t show multi-bar rests by default.
A part layout is something you would use if you were printing for a single player. This one doesn’t show the instrument names on each system, because there’s only one instrument. It shows multi-bar rests by default to save space.
There are other minor differences between them, but these are the main ones.