I design water slides, and I do it based off of pool sketches supplied by pool builders so I know the area we have to work with. We have all of the interchangeable parts drawn as individual part files and insert them as components in a New Assembly for the project we are working on.

When I am trying to hit an exact point with say a pier that is already installed rather than trial and error is there a way to take one of the component parts, we will say a 3' straight component , and simply replace it with a 5' straight component, can I do that without having to delete the 3' part and its mates and then insert the 5' and redo all of the mates to the parts as the 3' where? Seems like there should be an easier way, that how I have been doing it.

I attached a simple slide image, so you can get a visual..