Hi Dan,
The No Project option starts ABD without an active Project Configuration File (PCF). The PCF specifies the dataset so starting with no project will result in errors largely due to resources not being found.
One of the underlying ideas behind the QuickConfig is to keep the delivered dataset separate from both company and project Parts and DG Items to make upgrading to future dataset releases easier. If you copy the whole of a delivered dataset to become a company dataset you will face a more complex upgrade task when we release future versions of the dataset.
In the case of a campus owner we would still recommend the use of projects for individual buildings (or small groups of buildings). They are useful as a data organisation tool.
Individual projects help to keep tools like Floor Manager uncluttered. While Floor Manager can contain multiple buildings I would not embark on adding all of the building floors and their Grid Systems on a campus to a single Floor Manager library.
The other matter to consider is the extent of your campus. We recommend working within the Solids Working Area. Our default volume is 4.26km in extent. To work with positive coordinates the available volume is therefore 2.13km in extent. We recommend modelling each building (or closely related group of buildings) in positive coordinates near the Design File Centre then using geo-referencing to relate them to real-world locations.
Please see Series Index - Setting Up in the Real World for detailed background on this.
Using projects for each building (or closely related group of buildings) is fairly essential for this workflow.