Ok Gaieus, thanks. I'm going to try it out and learn more about the component axis behaviour and possibility to "Change Axes".

Probably some terminology problems.

To use an example, I make a box, and make it a component, on a specific active layer, with a name like 'Box_1'. Say the box is made 10ft x 2ft x 2ft in size.

I later decide this box should be 2ft x 2 ft x 2ft. Then I'd double-click it to edit the component, Box_1.

Then I'd select the face, and push it in, typing in '8ft' for the numeric entry. The box becomes 2ft x 2ft x 2ft.

Ok, but the bounding box stays the original size of the 10ft x 2ft x 2ft box. The bounding box doesn't resize. This occurs if the face to be pushed in is the face that was somehow automatically assigned by SU as having a 3-axis symbol attached to it.

Maybe the 3-axis would move with the face if I used the scale tool, but then I'd have to start using scale factors instead of just working in measurements, and that is fiddly and often less accurate.

Absolutely, I use push/pull all the time, it was the principle reason I switched to SketchUp, leaving behind all the fiddly CAD packages (Rhino, TurdoCAD) that haven't got anything nearly as ingenious. As the SU manual says "Push/Pull Tool is used to expand or decrease the volume of geometry in your models". So brilliant I've convinced all my friends to go SU. The scale tool however is so ornery it needs a big rethink.

I think my problem with the bounding box is when I push in on the face that had the 3-axis symbol attached. The axis won't follow the face, so the bounding box gets stuck back at the location of the 3-axis. So question is how to easily get the 3-axis to follow the pushed-in face?

If I use the push/pull tool to resize a component, I find that the bounding box does not follow the component resize.

For example, I draw a box and make it into a component. Then I push in one side of the box. The bounding box remains stuck on the original size. At the extreme of this situation, you might have a 10 feet long bounding box sticking out one side of a component that was later compressed to just 1 foot long.

How to resize the bounding box to match the new component size?