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.