This gave me a good idea for an extension/feature…
(I have the same frustrations with moving window positions, placing ponds & swimming pools in landscapes, or kitchen sinks into countertops, drain grates into roads, etc)…
We need a tool that can intersect components and allow us to hide the bits we don’t want… instead of permanently deleting the areas of wall, drywall, etc, the unwanted geometry is placed on a hidden layer so it can merged back into the model if we change our mind. The trick to this (and the part we are missing currently) is that we need those hidden parts to be inserted back into the components that they came out of originally. This might be acheiveable with an extension.
A different and possibly better method would be to improve the “cut hole in surface” function of a component; instead of the surface cut being a flat plane, it could be a 3d volume (simple box for starters?). This might be achievable with a new function to Sketchup’s core component creation tool.
If anyone know of, or wants to build an extension that can do either or both of these things, then i’m certain it’s worth money.
The “Negative Space” extension is the closest example I’ve found but it doesn’t appear to be finished.
The idea of cutting a shaped hole is nice (but poss. unecessary)
The “Hole Punch” extension looks promising but doesn’t do much more than the usual face-cutting component and has the same limitations that it cant work on multiple groups/components.