Flatten / Merge A Large Component
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Hi, i know i am using the wrong terminology here, so please bare with me
I have just imported a Crane from the Component Warehouse, which has made by model size quite big and the model has slowed down considerably.
Is it possible to merge all of the geometry in the component to one merged object, so that it cannot be edited again, thus making the file smaller. Thanks in advance.
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You should try purging your components and materials first.
If the crane is composed by repeating components you will only do worse by merging them.
If there are some big textures involved, again it will increase your file size. -
I brought in a Crane from Component Warehouse, and i deleted it because my model was getting really slow.
My filesize was 1.5mb without the crane, and it went up to 14.5mb when i brought the crane in, however even though i have deleted the crane, my model is still 14.5mb
Do i need to delete it from some memory area or something else. The crane is not showing in Outliner or in my model but for some reason my filesize is still 14.5mb
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Simply deleting the component from the model space doesn't remove it from the SKP file. You need to purge unused components from the In Model library. This is done in the Components window by setting it to In Model and choosing Purge Unused from the Details menu. You get to that menu by clicking on the arrow to the right of the search window in the Components window.
As Elisei wrote, exploding the crane component is likely to make your file size larger. It may be, however, that you could simplify it by remove some of the geometry in the model. Without seeing the crane model it is difficult to tell but very often models found on the 3D Warehouse can tolerate some cleanup. Some of then need a whole lot of cleanup to make them really usable.
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But what kind of complexity do you need on your crane details? What is the original model and final purpose?
I once downloaded a very complex container wich global shape is a box (like your crane I suppose), but it had all all the detail that could exist in the crane, modeled in a complex geometry. Exactly what I wanted to render... but not what I needed to make sketchup better.
Then the process of simplifying it was well... simple:
1 - I wanted to render it nicely - so I applied some Thea materials to it, then created a thea proxy and I didn't need such a complex model anymore.
5 - I modeled a box with the same size as the container (I'm lying (actually I inserted the proxy back to the model wich results in a box of lines component with same size of the container, for wich I just had to generate faces)
2 - I wanted a light model to work with Sketchup but that would still look like a container, not a box, and would also look good on Sketchup+Layout, so I exported a jpg for the sides of the container, the front, the back, bottom and top (it's simmetrical so one side image was enough).
3 - I combined all the sides in a jpg using Gimp trying to save the most space I could. It was a big image, so I downsampled it to be no more than 1024px wide (that seemed enough but I kept the original file before downsample)
4 - I imported the image to the model as material and on the bucket tool > edit > I resized the material to be of the same size of the container.
5 - I painted it using paint bucket and rightclick context menu > texture position.
It was ready to populate my Sketchup Model wich I did.
Is this what you want?
Best regards,
João
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Thanks a million for this guys, this helps a lot, i'll try what you said too JQL, thanks you.
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