Hi Brainshack,
The good news is that you can already do one of those - there is a feature to create a blueprint from a selection of actors in the world. Just select multiple objects and click “Convert to Class Blueprint.” It’s hidden away all the way at the bottom of the details panel:
I just tried it a moment ago and discovered we’ve got a small bug with this at the moment. When you first convert, it’ll look like all of your static meshes have disappeared. This is because the root of the created blueprint is set to be “Movable,” but the static mesh components themselves are “Static,” and you can’t have movable components with static children. So by changing the mobility of the root to be static (or the mobility of each child component to be movable), everything will show up as expected. Sorry about that, we’ll certainly try to fix it soon :). For clarity, here’s where you change the mobility for a component in the Blueprint Components Editor:
Note that once you convert the selection to a blueprint, you’ll have to go into the Blueprint Components Editor to move the components around. This is of course where your second suggestion would be nice to have. The best I can do on that one is tell you that we agree - component selection/manipulation in the world is something we often think about and discuss here.
-Dan