Before getting too far along with timber frame design using SketchUp I suggest studying some of the self paced tutorials for the basics of SketchUp. Understanding the basics will make your life much much easier down the road... For more basics I suggest a YouTube search for tutorials, checking out the Google SketchUp website for examples, checking out
http://www.sketchucation.com/, and maybe purchasing one of the SketchUp for Dummies or other publications. Then when getting into the timber frame specific area I suggest Clark's user's guide available on the TFG website.
To get into the issue at hand:
Components do not magically stay somewhere on your computer.
Components live within the drawing you are working, until you save them to a location on your hard drive or server - allowing you to build a library of common parts and pieces.
One way to have components available within other drawings or templates:
1. Browse your desktop, computer, hard drive or server and create a folder in a convenient place - ie 'Timber' or 'People' or 'Widgets'.
2. Create the component in SketchUp.
3. Right click on the component and choose 'Save As'
4. Navigate to the folder or location where you would like to save your components - ie the folder named 'Timber' or 'Widgets'.
When needing to access the component in a new drawing:
1. Open the 'Components' tool palette by accessing Window>Components
2. Navigate to the folder (read up on how to add a folder or directory to your favorites).
3. Choose the component you wish to add to your drawing, 'drag' it into your drawing and proceed to locate, size, rotate, etc. as needed.
Another way to have oft use components available within your drawings is to create a template with embedded components... but you'll need to better understand their use, drawings, saving templates, etc. before doing this.
Also note - the sequence of creating joinery with Clark's Rubies is to create a timber as a parent component, and then joinery as child components. To properly function the joinery must live within the timber component (think of nested eggs or dolls or boxes...)
