That is very clever! So I turn the surface and drape lines into a component, copy them, scale up e.g. 100X, drape, and the original components will get the cut lines, without having to downscale anything.

@jonfar said: thats good to know, because my 100+ mb files lag a bit ...that Sketchup was mostly CPU/RAM intensive... SU is CPU intensive (single-thread performance), nevertheless for a balanced system an appropriate GPU (as well as enough RAM) is of course required too. Don't invest to much in a GPU, at least for sole SU modeling purposes, otherwise you will be disappointed.

Keep in mind that deleting components does not remove them from the file. The components will still be held in the model. Any materials you might have tried remain in the In Model Materials collection as do Styles. Go to Window>Model Info>Statistics and hit Purge Unused to get rid of the unused stuff. Although not required, I like to use a plugin made by TIG to purge unused stuff because it gives a report of how many of each sort of thing gets purged.

Here is something that can drastically affect model size. I used CabMaker 3 extension and inserted 14 cabinets into the model. Most of the parts are components. I then saved the file as kitchen_1 size 6,369 K. I then opened the Component Inspector and chose In Model. It took just under 3 minutes to display all the components in the inspector. For these 14 cabinets there are a total of 745 entries in the inspector. I then save the file as kitchen_2 size 18,512 K. There were 745 thumbnails - 1 for each component. I then chose Components instead of In Model and closed the Inspector window. I then opened the first file kitchen_1. In this case I left the Component Inspector closed. I created a simple cube and turned it into a component. After about 3 minutes I regained control. I then saved the file as kitchen_3. It is 18,518 K. I opened the component Inspector, chose in Model and within a second all 746 thumbnails appear. It appears that Sketchup doesn't update the images when creating components within a script. Instead it does so after creating a component using the UI or when displaying the components in model. [image: jbh6_kitchenascomponents.png] I then installed a new version of CabMaker 3 which uses groups instead of components. I opened kitchen_2, selected all cabinets and ran the editor after which I purged. Then I opened the Component Inspector in Model which displayed a single component - the handle. I then saved the file as kitchen_4 size 3,521 K. Sketchup is also more responsive and there are no apparent wait times when creating a component using the UI. I would recommend to anyone working on very large projects to at least consider using groups - especially with nested containers that contain groups or components and no geometry. Of course there are situations where components make sense. Especially with geometry having high poly counts and where you want to make a change and have all copies change. Too bad we don't have a way to tell Sketchup not to create an entry for components in the component inspector on a component basis. [image: h14z_kitchenasgroups.png]

For more on this see: https://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=69030&hilit=+icon Except for TBoy suggestion to resize alltoolbar icons, and slbaumgartner about overall monitor scaling, I never got an answer/resolution from any of the, I assume, many 4K users

I'm sure that the culprit wasn't ALL of the plugins/extensions you had installed. Put some of them back and see what happens. Keep putting them back until you get to where it happens again. That should give you an idea of which one is at fault.

Some time before I made a little video about it. Perhaps it is useful for someone... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs6LtiWKbKw&t=2s

Yeah let's hope it doesn't become an issue, I've never seen a preview pane I don't think.

Thanks for taking the time for me Box! Ok I might try some plugins, those two you showed do look interesting.

I converted it with SimLab Composer and got a 22.3mb skp 2017 file (no textures). Then converted your bloated skp (with textures) to fbx with external textures, and got a 4mb .fbx file and a folder with 24mb of jpg textures.

Thanks all. I actually found it this morning. For some reason, this setting is saved with a scene. I found that turning it off and updating the scene corrected the issue.

Thanks, easy fix!

It looks like you made a nice 2D profile of the train but if you want to make that 3D and make it look right, I think you'll find you have an awful lot of work to do. Will you show the final model straight or will you want to put it on a curve or something to make it look more dramatic?

I guess I should be clearer that this is regarding components with sub-components. If I make separate components for a cabinet and doors, and put them on separate layers, I can hide one layer and select one of them independent of the other. If I make a cabinet component with a door sub-component, I can still assign layers and view them independently within the model, but a report generated selecting the cabinet component will always include the door sub component whether I hide/layer it out of view or not. Just like if the report was made with "Entire Model" instead of "Current Selection" it grabs everything regardless of hidden/layer status. The "Current Selection" logic is selective only to the parent level. Once it has a parent component, it doesn't care if the children are hidden/layered away. That seems like a big oversight for it to behave differently than the logic users work with in the model, and is currently crushing my dreams.

Hello, I want to ask you.. This topic is from 2012. Is there any way to import/use rfa. format now ? Or it is still a problem. Thank you.

What file?

Well I tried to pull it off effortlessly and sadly they can't be repaired..... RIP those models and created and reformed throughout the years since 2013. I'll never forgive the sudden deletion that day, it happened when I was away from home.

crashes at startup are typically related to the following 3 reasons: 1.) Win: faulty OpenGL support of used graphics card driver 2.) incompatible or faulty extensions/plugins 3.) Win: faulty program installation to fix: 1.) Win: update to latest version 1.) Win: ensure that SU is running on a dedicated graphics card (preferrably a nVidia GeForce) if available instead of an integrated graphics sub-system as e.g. the intel HD: "nVidia Control Panel > 3D Settings > SketchUp...") 2.) disable Ruby extensions/scripts by adding the following parameter to the SU command line: - Win: "...\SketchUp.exe /DisableRubyAPI" - Mac: "...\SketchUp.exe -DisableRubyAPI YES" 3.) Win: install by: "right-click > Run as Administrator" 3.) Win: ensure that the required SU prerequisites (= MS runtime libraries) are fully installed resp. download and install them manually

I use QFT: http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=348501#p348501 There is also TriangulateFaces, but QFT works faster for me: http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=175613#p175613

You could export model with WebGL export plugin and get all the textures in a folder. https://extensions.sketchup.com/en/content/t2h-export-webgl