Problems with duplicating simple structures

[MaxJones3]

I have been having this problem off and on since I began this process of creating a fleet of small structures.  When I create a project of a small shed/cabin/studio (foundation, walls, roof, and framing) I intend to duplicate it and set each one to a different roof pitch (shed roof profile).

During my first attempts, I found that having locks and pins on the structure (using floor plan view) caused problems translating everything, especially the framing.  It didn't seem to matter whether I selected-all and then copy-moved or grouped then create-similar.  Once the locks & pins came off, no problems.

After success with this process several times for a variety of structure dimensions, I began to experiment with roof framing of the shed roof profile to see if I could further streamline the reproduction.  After finding that this was inefficient for my purposes, I returned the top plates to level with idea of modifying the roofs individually.

Now, I have the same issues with duplicating this simple structure all over again.  Here are pictures of the problem-instances:

a) Ungrouped - Copy/Move

b) Grouped - Create/Similar

 It seems that Revit is made for this sort of precise, parametric reproduction of instances across projects.  So, as weird as this is to me, I must be doing something wrong because this should be routine function.

Any ideas, insight, suggestions as to what is going wrong here?

Thanks again, helpful people!

[MaxJones3]

This error messages comes up with the Group-Create/Similar problem: