As my first sentence indicates the light came on
and now I have a good understanding of how to
use S's and L's.

Fantastico!

Sounds like you have leaped ahead of many of the posters who tried to
help. I am inspired to look into this now myself.

Sketchup is surely pulling from the state-of-the-art in mid to high-
end 3D CAD systems. They have all moved towards building parts in
context with associated views as drawings, hiding all the other parts
and auto updating any changes because the apparent 2D drawing is
really just some live view of the model.

The next evolving concept is showing "in process" parts where you can
see the part blank and then each stage of the process as material is
milled away a process at a time.