The “divisi” functionality in Dorico shows part of the development team’s thinking about how to optimize the workflow for complex orchestral scores. The other side of the coin, combining more than one monophonic instruments onto a single stave, isn’t implemented yet, but no doubt it will be, in some future version.
It’s self-evident that large “sections” like orchestral strings are best considered as section instruments in Dorico.
It’s not self-evident (to me, anyway) what is the best way to deal with “sections” like most wind and brass instruments, where there are a small number of players who usually play independent musical lines, but (ideally) would not have separate staves everywhere in the score - though of course they would have independent parts.
At present, any approach will involve some unavoidable busy-work (though less in Dorico than in some other notation programs). But looking forward, is it better to set up a section of two or four orchestral oboes as a single “section player” and use divisi, or as several solo players and use something “not implemented yet” to combine the parts in the score?
There are also playback issues here (since different staves of a multi-staff instrument, and different voices on a single staff, can’t yet play back with different virtual instruments - but again, there are hints that those are only temporary limitations
What is the development team’s “vision for the future” over the best strategy for this?
Note: Part of the motivation for the question is to plan what to do for a long-term (years, not months) large scale project using Dorico, where taking a hit in “short term busy-work” might be worth it, in order to set up a workflow which will fit best with how Dorico might develop over the timescale of the whole project.