Found this yt channel. It all looks so easy 
I guess I will start here for cockpit manipulation. But if you have any hints be sure to share.
For anyone interested, my endeavour so far.
It is huuge time sink thats without a doubt. Even watching tutorial videos and reading some documentation seems never ending.
I have installed BLENDER 2.79 (because that guy from that video uses it); I have added XPlane importer addon to it
and also blender2xplane exporter addon
It was of course not that straight forward, I went through few versions to come with this working combination.
So I was able to import existing xplane object into blender; do a separation of one switch; do some simple texturing work; do export back into xplane object; added it in plane maker.
But the result is not that great - switch object seems to look raw and the texturing seems like on the inside of the 3d object.
This will require much more time invested to do something reasonably good looking seems. Will take a brake for now
how it looks reasonably ok inside blender
how it looks wrong in plane maker (the view is from the floor up on the instrument panel through middle console; in green are the default switches on the middle console - console is invisible just the switches are visible from below; in red is my addition; for some reason my addition looks from front the same as the default switches from behind 
)
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Good find. This seems to be perfect fit for my purpose
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