I have had a lot of fun with creating and using dynamic components. There is however one feature that I have not been able to find that I would really like to have. I would like to be able to build a dynamic component that has a container at the top level that could be graphically edited in a way that can modify the numerical values inside of the component. For example I now have a block of wood that I can edit with the object dialog box to change its length, width and height. I can generate a name for the object based on those values. What I can’t do is to be able to select the object and graphically stretch one of those dimensions. I might like to only be able to edit the length of the object graphically while editing the other parameters through the dialog box. I have much more complicated objects that also have a width, length and height within which a lot of sub objects are nested. I would like to be able to do a simple stretch on some external dimension graphically without having to open the dialog box. This type of feature would make it a lot easier to stretch dynamic objects to fit into a given location. What I have to do now is to measure the length of the space available, open the dialog box and type in the new length. I can see what objects I want to stretch to but I can not easily stretch my dynamic object to fit.
Is this not the purpose of the Scale tool?
I was thinking the same thing, although you put it more succinctly.
It is possible to limit which ScaleTool handles appear on a Component if that is what you had in mind.
It is also possible to use the Scale tool to change a DC and have it update using the new size. Look up the DC CURRENT function for this. https://help.sketchup.com/es/article/114561
Note there is a bug when using using the Scale tool on a DC - when you enter a length in the Measurements box after a Scale operation, the DC does not update - you need to manually Redraw the DC to force it to update.
Thanks for the suggestions…
It does appear that the use of the scale tool does pretty much what I had in mind - at least for the components that I already have built. I also can see how limiting the scaling handles works for what I have in mind. I think maybe the only thing then that could be useful would be to be able to select some feature of the object to scale rather than being limited to scaling the overall envelop of the object. For example if I have a window object that includes molding and trim around the window I might like to be able to specify stretching a rectangle that shows the rough opening size of the window rather than having to stretch using the extent of the molding.
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