Large wind farms in Google Earth, "place" vs export,

[charlieiii]

I'm trying to model very large wind farms that have been proposed for my area in Michigan. This means putting hundreds of wind turbines over dozens of square miles, a reletively easy job to do in Sketchup but...

If the models are put in Google Earth via the Sketchup "Place" function they export fast, navigation is reletively smooth and the kmz created by google earth is small--BUT the turbines float in the air and google earth clamping option, under properties, doesn't help.

If the model is exported directly from sketchup to a kmz file the file size is huge, the navigation is slow and often the export to kmz simply doesn't work, but the models are all clamped to the earth.

Does anyone here know how to get the good navigation and small file size by exporting via the Place function and have all the models clamped to the surface as they are when the kmz is created by the export function in sketchup?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Charlie

P.S. Here are some screen captures of what i'm trying to do. When there is good navigation with all the windmills clamped to the earth I'll make kmz files available to the local community so they can explore and see what is coming.
http://www.thumbpower.net/wind%20farm%20resort.htm

[Gaieus]

Hi Charlie - glad you made it here.

I'm still looking into your file and to be honest, I cannot spot the glitch. I think if I can exclude every possible "user error", I can make a bug report on this. Then some GSU Team members should also look into it.

[charlieiii]

Thanks for taking an interest.

This morning I laid out a small wind farm called High Praire, with 67 turbines, in Minnesota. I'm not sure if it's been built yet. The turbines were placed by overlaying the site map from the site application form.

Here is the skp file.
http://www.thumbpower.net/kmz/High%20Praire%20Turbines%20in%20place.skp 7MB

Here is the KMZ file created by using "Place" into GE, then saving to kmz in GE. http://www.thumbpower.net/kmz/High%20Praire%20Wind%20Farm%20placed%20and%20saved%20in%20GE.kmz 3.78 MB

Here is the KMZ file created with the export function of sketchup.
http://www.thumbpower.net/kmz/High%20Praire%20Turbines%20in%20place.kmz 11.9 MB

The KMZ file created by sketchup is big, slow to load, and choppy to navigate. It's only virtue is all the models are clamped to the earth. The KMZ file created by GE is smaller, and navigates much better, but as the models get farther from the origin they float higher off the ground. To see that in this model, which only stretches about 10 miles you have to navigate close to a tower and look from ground level.

Trying to save the kmz created by sketchup from GE causes GE to crash in the attempt.

Why does sketchup create a more complicated larger KMZ than google earth? Shouldn't they both create the same size KMZ? Every turbine is identical and has the identical orientation so the KMZ file only needs to be the geometry of one turbine plus the 67 locations where they will be placed. It should be a reletively small kmz. The size of both KMZ files suggests the model is being saved multple times.

Thanks again for taking an interest

Charlie