Wall Openings in Revit

Are wall openings in revit really the way to go? That has been a question asked by a lot of the members in the Architectural Industry. I know of a few firms that create their walls using layer by layer instead of a single wall. The reasoning behind this is having more functionality of the layers of the walls. When doing this they use a curtain wall as their exterior windows and use the wall opening command to cut the walls behind the window system. Once this is done they group the window, mullions, openings and any other items so the group can then be copied to other portions of the building.  The problem with this is, when the group is copied to a wall on a different axis or mirrored to a different portion of the building the wall openings disappear. If a new opening is placed then the other groups then have 2 openings located in the same place. So it appears that wall openings and groups do not play nice. The way around this is to create a component family of a wall opening. It should be a wall hosted family to have it cut the wall. The height and width should be instance parameters so they can be adjusted inside the project (without having to duplicate each opening for a new size).  By making them instance parameters this enables you to select on the opening and receive grips on the 4 sides so you can flex it in any direction to make it the desired size just by pulling the sides of the opening. The opening can also be aligned and locked to maintain the dimensions of a window. Once these are grouped there have been no reported problems in copying this to a different location.