Hi
Any tips and suggestions on how to do this are still welcome.
However as many members are no doubt aware there is a great resource on writing scripts for Sketchup in the 13 Chapter 400+ pages on Automating Sketchup "by Matthew Scarpino at :
http://www.autosketchup.com/downloads/Automatic_SketchUp.pdf
This looks like it covers all of the things I set out in this post so here goes.