I'm new to assemblies, can anybody point me to some good articles or searches I'm going to want to have set up for my production team?

Manufacturing is a broad topic. A lot of implementations and helpful articles can be found on SuiteAnswers and the Help Center with the right search words.

the thing i'm having trouble figuring out is, if i do an item search: criteria: type = assembly transaction.type = sales order results: name type transation.document number transaction.quantity the results i'm getting are name type document# qty assembly assembly SO1 1 component assembly SO1 1 the search is returning the inventory item component of the assembly as if it were the assembly. Am i missing something simple here? I'm having trouble getting any searches done because of this.

without trying it myself, i found this https://netsuite.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/46071/kw/search%20assemblies