I guess I could improve the manner I try to make a point.

Suppose we have the stringer above. The stringer is made of repeated segments when scaled along the red axis. Is it possible to scale the component on the green axes so that the stringer repeats horizontally every 16 inches?

The goal is to have a deck stair that satisfies variable height and width. Therefore, you can have, for example 13 steps vertically and 5 stringers horizontally (making it a 60" wide staircase).

In the example above, in order to get the second copy of the stringer scale, I had to rename it. But renaming it, disables the ability to scale the staircase on the green axis.

There is no way I bash sketchup, especially as I am as green as it can be, and have limited time to give to learning it. Certainly, as far as dc are concerned, there is very few documentation that goes beyond the basics which is a shame.

Can't do the scale thing.

The sketchup appeal (for me) is the ability to help customers visualize the end result of the project.

The second plus should be the ability to reuse components by modifying parameters. Sketchup appears weak on this second need.

Yet I'm still discovering this thing, so there might be quite a few tricks out there.

O Jeff. I found the answer. The copied component needs to be renamed. So instance names need to be unique.

What if I want to stretch the component horizontally, can strings be added dynamically?

Jeff,

I went a second time and checked the link before your post - so I edited out the 'not a component' part. I'm surprised you still found my original post. Sorry, I'm exhausted here and ready to call it a day.

Regarding scaling. When inside the parent (wrapper) component and copy the stringer, the copied components do not scale. Consider this picture.

The following picture shows that the second component is bound to the same parent component.

I definitely will investigate the DC StairCaseBuilder. It looks awesome.

Regarding the flip-along. What I'd like is to have the ability to say about some rail that it is a left hand side or a right hand site. The design of the rail demands that. I'd like this to be made available as a parameter chosen thru the component window by the user as apposed to design time. Do I make sense? It's as if you have a shoe as a component and want to specify the 'left/right' component parameter resulting on flipping the component.

I found some time for sketchup today. Thanks to Dave R's suggestion, here is a stringer that expands by adding steps. Please feel free to make improvements.

Howard Leslie: The plugin you are referring to has some great pictures. I'll take a look.

The stringer does what I need by having standard dimensions (11 run, 7 riser).

Here is something interesting, and once again sketchup disappoints when it comes to more serious stuff. A regular deck stair has three stringers. If I create a component with three stringers, where two are identical copies of the first, only the first one responds to the scale command. I'm no expert at all, but when I hit such snags, I feel that sketchup is a mere kids play.

Why would sketchup have no parameters applied to angles, to orientation (such as flip along) and many other actions that are so common in the design process?

stair-stringer.skp

Hiding the edge is a great idea. I'll try it tonight. Thanks.

Here is another rail style that is true to its real use.

rail-02.skp

It is surprising that most stair components online are both limited and unrealistic. I cannot use them either indoors or outdoors. I talk as a builder.

I thought of building individual risers but how do I get rid of the join lines once component is customized? Do I have to edit each and soften the edges!? That is a hack.

Can you had 'voids'? Can you specify that line intersection behavior (as with solids)?

If I can get these done the rest seems easy. It was rather straightforward to do the rail between posts as dynamic components.

rail-01.skp

How would you go about building a stair stringer as a dynamic component? Riser and step count matter. I've tried but failed.