When to and when not to use compound shapes

[Another Aerospace Man]

Hi there—I've been using Designer for about three years and just learned what compound shapes were last night (I've gotta get with the times, I know!). It seems like a powerful tool for seamless creation of new shapes with ease, and having played around with it for a little, I find it renders a lot of destructive shape-making moot. But are there specific cases in which you do not want to go with compound shapebuilding and go with the default?

Apologies if this is in the wrong category.

Edited September 2, 2022 by aeromachinator
Title change

[NotMyFault]

Components are really nice, but there are a few issues and limitations:

• You cannot assign individual colors to members of a compound 
• You cannot assign individual layer FX to members
• Using compounds as a vector mask will not allow to expand members while in masking position - which would be great to fine-tune the vector mask

So if you have one of the requirements above, you may need to use groups, or destructive methods to achieve the desired result.