Hoping someone can clear up a question on groups inside a component.
I drew ten similar objects, call them cubes, and made each cube into its own group. So I had ten individual groups of cubes. Then I grouped all ten cubes together resulting in a single group with ten sub-groups of cubes inside. I then made the top group into a component. The component now has those same ten groups inside. Then I made a copy of the component so I had two components each with those same 10 sub-groups inside.
So my question is, when I started to edit the cubes (each cube still its own group) inside the component the cubes acted as components, editing the cube in the adjacent copy.
Why is this? Does this mean that any group inside a component acts as a component?
Yes, anything inside a component is mirrored in other instances of the same component. If you want make a new version of the component that will not be connected in this way you can select an instance of the the component and right click>Make Unique. This will sever the connection for that instance allowing you to edit it’s contents without changing the other instances.
“Copying a group using the copy tool in SketchUp will create copies of the group that share a common definition until an instance is edited manually or this method is used. If multiple copies are made, all copies share a definition until all copies are edited manually, or all copies have this method used on them. This method ensures that the group uses a unique definition entry in the drawing database.”