Boh,
Its the editing of the detail that I don't understand. In my experience with other programs, you often have limitations when it comes to editing linked files, especially DWGs. Often times you are limited to hiding layers, but my team would need to edit: lines, lineweight, line type, splines, fills, patterns, etc. Do you have the option to edit linked details to this extreme?
In my experience, normally, in order to edit a link you would need to edit its source file directly.