Unique components not staying unique

I made a rectangular solid, made it a component, copied it 3 times, made each unique.
Changed one , ie cut a hole in it, & they all get the hole ?
I tried repeating this, sometimes it works ok sometimes not & I can’t see what I am doing wrong.
Any suggestions ?
Win 7 & SU 2015 pro

Be sure to make each one unique, selecting two and making them unique makes them a pair.
You can make 10 copies of a component, select 5 of them and make unique and they will all be copies of one and the other 5 copies of the other.
To make all individuals you need to select each separately and make it unique. Or use a plugin that Makes All Unique.

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Thanks for reply
Yes I did do that but still not getting reliable result.
I am normally solidworks user & very new to SU for a new client job.
So for a trial I made simple model box, copied it twice made each one unique individually & can see that each one has different name. If I cut a hole in box 3 it appears in the other 2, so it is not unique & I can’t seem to cut hole in box 1 at all.
components unique.skp (81.7 KB) see attached file

I’m not sure how you made them but you have made nested components, so the outer wrapper is unique but the inner group is still an instance of the original.
Make a block, select it all, make it a component, use ctrl/move to make two copies, right click on each and select Make Unique.

Each of the “outer” components is unique, but then each outer component contains an “inner” component which is not unique. The inner components all refer to the same Component. Editing one modifies all instances in the model.

Double-click the outer component to enter it’s editing context. Any changes here will be unique to the component you double-clicked. Double-click the inner component to enter its editing context which is applied to all instances since it is not unique.

It may help to open the Outliner window which will let you see, navigate, and modify the model hierarchy.

Also open the Entity Info window. This is where you can give your Components meaningful names. Note that Components can have the same Name, but their Definition must be unique.

Well thanks for that, I did what you said & it worked fine. Don’t know what I did differently the first time. I will go back to my actual job & reconstruct the items with more care
Thanks

That outliner window looks interesting, I had not seen that before, so much new stuff to learn.
Thanks
Spoke too soon, I must be doing something wrong.
So back to simple example
I create new solid, copy it twice, make each solid unique & then I can edit each individually, all ok.
So then I delete 2 of the components, leaving just 1.
start new model, import the previous solid, copy it twice, then make each unique, then I have the problem, they have a different definition, so I think they are unique, but if It try to edit 1 the change is applied to all.
Is it because I imported the part ?
That is what I want to do, import a component then make different version of it on an assembly.

Ok, so when you Import a .skp file it automatically gets wrapped in a new Component.

You can explode the imported component after import to get your original component back.

To avoid the import & explode workflow, you can save the in-model component by right-clicking it and selecting Save As. Then it will not need exploded after import.

Use the component browser to save components to a collection, then insert them rather than import them.

Thanks, that explained my problem & now working ok.
I will read up on the components to collection method too.
I think this issue is now resolved
OK, made a components library for this project & that is working well