Models or DGNS which is better?

Dustin, You will not have those show up with your sheet dgn files when sending Sheets out to their own files. Give it a try, you'll likely see the same as my image above!  ;D    Edit: Adding another image here from within the DGN file the sheets were made FROM... Notice the two separate dgn files defined within the Saved View (again, made automatically) and the presence of the Annotation Group used by said sheets. 

Are you not using .dgnlibs?? these are propagated to everyfile in a workset and it keeps all the annotations uniform for the whole company and project.  if however you need to do specific edits for a particular project thats still possible by changing the workset dgn lib for that specific project. bit of a pain honestly cause im never sure what setting where is the issue till i finally track it but once its fixed it stays across the board.

Or is this part of that Last Mile Utility? when we break out our sheets we do it by creating them in each file. IE PNP-1-4 has a default model with all the references and the named boundaries for sheets 1-4. the next file has the same but starts at 5-9.  and the benefit is mainly for controlling references as we tend not to place any text on the actual sheets at all. for instance levels not showing up

Concur with MaryB and she is quite correct on the xsections in ORD being a handful and worse. you really cant do alot of measurments in regards to the surfaces because its somehow not a line? but a terrain and thus you cant flood measure areas on xsections or pattern anything. updates and annotations are not terrible but be prepared for a lot of pre-work to get annotations functioning. also you can do reference attachments but it has to be xsection by xsection. currently we are having issues getting the xsections to have even start elevations at the bottom of the cuts (ie 870 not 871,877, etc) it wants to base the start of the xsection on finished grade and not round up or down to even intervals.

As for plan and profile sheets we are looking at limiting them to 4 sheets per DGN for throwing multiple people on them.

Another concern is where the Annotation Groups are placed when exporting sheets out to their own files.  Those dgn files (sheet and drawing models) created by the software will not have a "default" model and even if you did throw those out to a specific dgn file, the default is ignored and the Annotation Group is still pulled from that original default model that was used during the process and no access to copying from Standards DGNLIBS. (Named Boundaries can be referenced into any dgn).  I've heard some workflows have dgn files containing only Named Boundaries.  So, the question comes up, what if an Annotation Group needs to be added or copied for edit? What process would you use to update the Annotation Group apart from rerunning the sheets?  The Drawing Model Annotation tool is also limited to that one dgn (it will not go out and scan through and remove annotations or place new without the user going into each dgn file).  At the end of the day, the only benefit to throwing sheets out to independent sheets is the ability to place text in their drawing model.  The Batch Process may have functionality to assist for those able to write command files to run the necessary tools and sequence of options. Also note that the software creates Saved Views when creating the sheets.  Those Saved Views exist in that original file. 

Don't get me started on Drawing models...I understand the purpose, but I am not a fan.

My personal thought is that drawing models and associated sheets should be in the same file. Files should be separated for "type" of sheet (plan, construction detail, erosion, grading, etc.) and on long projects, they should probably be divided into workable segments.

My practice over time is to have one sheet per file, all referencing a single "container file" for their type, just because that makes it easiest to throw bodies onto a project in a time crunch. If all of the Plan-profiles are in one file, only one person can work on them. If each sheet is its own file, I can take sheets 1-20, Mike can take sheets 21-40, and Sherry can take 41-58. It's not ideal (I love the idea of having all the sheets of one type as models so you can just work your way through) but getting the job out the door often requires solutions that are less than ideal.

Of course, I'm still working in SS10, so I haven't had any daily-use, project-driven pratice with the ORD Way. There are already things I don't care for - cross section drawings/sheets sound particularly heinous after decades of just being able to click through them in one file with Geopak and InRoads. The introduction of drawing models due to the lack of actual graphic profiles or cross sections is going to give quite a few people fits. I'm also leery about the saved view idea, because of the number of ways and times they need to be updated; I'm more a fan of a straight-up reference attachment.