I have only recently started to use the replicate feature so I might be doing something wrong. But I have noticed that if you try to automatically generate a placement rule area in a hierarchical sheet that contains other hierarchical sheets, the generate area contains only the components of the parent hierarchical sheet without including the components of the internal hierarchical sheets. I don’t know if this is done by design but it is not my expected behaviour. I would expect the created placement area contains all of the components of the hierarchical sheet and sub-hierarchical sheets, otherwise replicating layout in this context doesn’t make any sense.
Another little thing I have noticed is that when you automatically create a placement rule area, if you then click ctrl+z to undo, it doesn’t get rid of it. You have to delete manually.
Also I was having a play with this and the same thing happens with component classes. When enclosing a set of components within a rule area in the schematics, if you then try to automatically generate a placement rule area it won’t include any component in hierarchical sheets.
If you’re seeing incorrect behaviour, please file a bug report with exact replication steps, and an example project and we’ll take a look.
For the component class case, this was by design. There have been a handful of people who have commented it would be good for them to be inherited; I could see the utility of a property on hierarchical sheets to enable this (something like ‘Inherit component classes’) - but I haven’t thought through how difficult it would be to implement yet.
… you could also try with the 9.0.3 release candidate which is hot off the press! But if you do, use a copy of your project in case of any critical bugs.