Pyroluna.. thank you for your response.
The hidden / nested components won't purge because the main component is being used in the model.
I have also tried using different layers to turn things on and off, but they (meaning various hidden mullions) still show up in the report I generate even though they're not visually shown.
The only way I've been able to get around this, is to go into the outliner window and manually delete any nested component that is hidden (or greyed out) then if I run a report, the hidden nested components will not be included in the newly generated report. It's just a manual way of doing something I thought I could/should be able to control automatically.
thanks again..
W