Maybe there is a way to check this that I don't know about, but whenever I create associate duplicates I lose track often times of which one was the parent object. Then when I try to modify all of them like moving multiple faces with the gripper, the changes I make to the parent moves the faces on the children parts which doubles the distance I want to move the faces.

My suggestion is if their was a way to quickly distinguish the parent from the child parts. Maybe a P hovering over it, or a different color or something, or a pop up stopping the modification reminding that their is a parent/child relationship.

Ok, well I found my answer. Right beside the show/hide buttons is the show parents/hide parents buttons. Duh. Never had a show/hide button in AutoCad 2004 so I have just recently started getting used to this handy feature. Very nice.