You have to Leave Game in the pause menu in order to get new areas generated once you've visited them.
I'm not sure whether the levels are generated when you reach them or when you start the Act/game/area, but it doesn't really matter - either way the only way to get new levels generated is to leave that game.
Companion damage scales based on attack speed. This was confirmed by Bashiok and tested by theorycrafters, who arrived at these numbers*:
APS Companion Damage
1.00 30%
1.34 40%
1.40 42%
1.43 43%
1.60 48%
1.84 55%
*Calculated by looking at the in-game tool-tip, which changes based on the APS of the character.
Note: The wolf, being a shorter duration (25 seconds), does twice the %.
That is, the companion does the % of your weapon damage based on your APS. If it follows this logic of being a channeled DoT (which is what most theorycrafters have come to agree), then based on Bashiok's post, the tick rate (how often it attacks) increases as your APS increases. As for speed it attacks, it would behave like any other DoT in this situation. It would attack once per cycle for its inherent percentage, so if your APS is 1, it attacks once per second for 30% weapon damage. If your APS is 1.6, your cycle time decreases to 0.625 seconds per attack (1/1.6), so it would attack once every 0.625 seconds for 48% weapon damage. If it follows this model, your weapon damage would have nothing to do with companion damage, but its speed (and therefore indirectly, its dps) would affect companion damage.
As for the boar companion, it says on the wiki that it "strikes multiple enemies with every swing."
Edit: After some testing with a level 60 demon hunter, it appears that the percentages are roughly correct. For the ferrets, even though they are animated to attack separately, it seems the total damage is split between the two. The boar is really hard to judge, but as far as I can tell, the damage is the same as the others, just as a cleave attack that hits enemies in front of the boar for full damage to each.
All this information is gathered by personal experience or by experiences posted on Diablo forums that were confirmed by more than one person. It's difficult to get exact answers until everyone starts posting their findings, since Blizzard rarely explains how game mechanics work.
Best Answer
The blue arrow in this image is where you can view the game level of monsters in your game. The 70 represents the level of all monsters in the game.
There is no approximating because all monsters will scale to this level as it changes as you level up in game.
Higher difficulties do not matter in regards to monster level, it just adds monster % buffs.