Good Morning Jeffrey!
I know you have been using ConDoc for quite some time (thanks!), but wanted to ask about step 7. There is never any need to click the File > Insert option inside of LayOut. ConDoc pushes everything you need through the scrapbooks inspector.
I don’t think that autosave would have gotten in the way of anything. It is true that if you open a SketchUp file, leave it there open for more than the autosave setting (usually 5 minutes), SketchUp will create an extra file in your folder with a different name. Now, once you save your SketchUp file, this autosave temp file is deleted automatically.
Whenever you run the ConDoc Export, you are forced to save. So this should eliminate any autosave files as the culprit.
Maybe you were doing a “save as” vs a “save”?
I recently stumbled across a nice fail safe for saving, updating, and avoiding the strange missing new scenes issue. Don’t open SketchUp, then open your file. Instead… Open LayOut, then from the File > Document Setup > References dialog, select your model and choose Open. Opening your files this way creates a kind of “livesync” with LayOut. No need to right click and update models. No need to update from the Document Setup dialog. Just save in SketchUp, then go back to LayOut and you will notice a slight hesitation and then your models need rendered again.
a HUGE extra bonus! I find this method to be 10x faster than messing around with the Document Setup dialog. Everytime I go in there and click on my reference LayOut would choke for a minute or so. No more! Give it a try…