I often will scale down a score for repeat use with a smaller group. I would previously do a “save as” under new name “my score - sans brass” and do the revisions. Would it be more efficient to just add a new flow to the original score, copy the old score into the new flow and make the changes? I like the idea of hot having a bunch of different files, but I worry about the 1) resources needed as larger scores get slow and 2) possible confusion in the list of players in setup.
I think using Duplicate Flow to copy the current state of the flow to a new one, then selecting the layouts in the right-hand list and un-checking either the new copy or the original flow so that it no longer appears in the layouts should work fine. You can create a single custom score layout to which you could assign all of your flows, so that you can still see the older versions.
Add a full score layout and call it Super Score.
Add all of your existing Players plus new instruments to Super Score.
Set new players to show at the top or bottom (or middle, if you prefer!).
Carefully rename ALL part layouts NOW so you know which ones relate to full score and which relate to short score.
Do all scaling down in Super Score (generally in Galley view).
Add a full score layout and call it Short Score, only including instruments that appear in your smaller orchestration.
Do layout work in Short Score layout.
Fix parts.
The advantage to this method is that if you make changes in the future, you can update both versions of the piece in one layout - not quite simultaneously, but without flicking back and forth between layouts or projects.
So, in order to not only remove instruments in the short score, but adjust remaining instrument parts (for the short score only, retaining original parts) for example: give a melody (formerly oboe) to another instrument (flute) and then adjust the flutes to accommodate the change.
Would you create new flute parts, copying the originals, carefully naming them Flute 1 superscore (intact) Flute 1 shortscore (revised) and make sure the Superscore layout has selected the former and the Shortscore layout the latter? then make adjustments?
I have to confess I’m usually arranging for a different set of instruments rather than a subset of the existing instruments.
I think I would indeed create new flute players, and then rename them using a hack that Daniel suggested earlier on this evening, which is to rename “Flute” as " Flute" (i.e. with a space at the start of the name).