Dear Simon.
Thank you for the assistance on this I was unaware of this workflow.- the above works for me in this instance as I only have a few nested families in this case.
A appreciate that this is probably the only supported workflow, but I am sure you will agree it is a little long-winded.
It should be easier a case of selecting what you need and then using the filters in the schedule to remove the top-level assembly (Assembly of convenience if you like) as you require.
Also when testing the method above I found it impossible to edit any of the parameters in the automatically created schedules, This also seems odd and a significant omission knowing Revit's holistic approach to updating geometry.
Thanks again but I still feel that the addition of the above functionality would be a big PLUS.
Regards
Andy