If you could create a tool to do this, what would it be like? To tell you the truth, I can't imagine something much simpler than what was proposed so far.

Of course, the ideal would be that the object components would be named in an inteligible way. That is the case with many commercial objects, where you have components named "door", "window", "roof", etc. But specially in free stuff you often find "box1", "cylinder2", etc. Whoever created the object could have named it properly but, hey, it was free so you can't complain... :-)

Just one note: your impossibility to expand the side panel doesn't exist in more advanced versions, which makes the job easier.