Starting a fresh thread for this topic, as I inadvertently semi-hijacked the "minor bug" thread.  (sorry about that).   Sooooo happy about the bounding box feature, hoping it works as well as it appears to.  Normally I wait until SP1 or 2 to upgrade, but the bounding box is worth the early adoption risk.

Picking up the conversation here:

John - while it is true that a plane can be selected for orientation, the thickness-width-length are reported in ascending numerical order, without respect to the selected plane of orientation. (in limited testing anyway)   For my purposes that is desirable, but for others it may be a drawback.

There are a couple cases where bounding box sizes do not function as needed for me, as follows:

Discs - a cylindrical part where the diameter is greater than the length of the cylinder.  For this, the starter model works as follows: "Ø" is placed as the thickness property, width and length are pulled from sketches.  (no bounding box used)

Angle Brackets: the sizes needed (leg-leg-length-thickness of leg) are taken from sketches, not the bounding box.

Pins (cylindrical parts where length is greater than diameter) work with the bounding box, with the exception that "Ø" is placed in the thickness property, then the width appears as the diameter and the length is indeed the length.

So "hopefully" I'll have stock sizes for everything newly created without any clicks outside the normal bom/print processes.  Will see how it shakes out...