Partial backup and restore using filegroups
I don't know of anyway to do a schema backup or restore in SQL Server.  Your solution of putting all of the schema data on a filegroup will allow you to restore the database to another server, but will require that you restore the primary filegroup as well.  (note, this is possible on SQL Server Enterprise Edition versions 2005 and above). One problem for your situation might be that you could only have one of the partially restored databases running on the same instance of SQL Serve  This link covers the piecemeal restore process:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms177425.aspx