A Scaling Question

hellnbak · 29 Oct 2010, 02:19

I've been working on a car model for a while now, one I downloaded from the warehouse and am modifying. I just noticed that the thing is 54 feet long! Don't know why the guy who created it made it so huge, but I have several questions concerning this.

(1) Is there an advantage to making your model huge over making it to scale?
(2) If I reduce it to scale (about 17 feet long) what affect will that have on it? I know it will reduce the file size, but will that result in better response time when working on it? Will it affect the detail of the model at all? Are there any disadvantages to scaling it down that much?

I just returned from Barnes & Noble after purchasing Sketchup For Dummies and Sketchup the Missing Manual (ouch$$$$), so I hope to be able to figure out a lot of things for myself as I study them, so maybe I won't have to bother you good people quite as much in the future. I must say I love Sketchup, to the point that I've been playing with it instead of winterizing my home, I've downloaded maybe 40 videos from YouTube, and my cats are getting very skinny.

Wo3Dan · 29 Oct 2010, 07:09

@hellnbak said:

.....
(1) Is there an advantage to making your model huge over making it to scale?
(2) If I reduce it to scale (about 17 feet long) what affect will that have on it? I know it will reduce the file size, but will that result in better response time when working on it? Will it affect the detail of the model at all? Are there any disadvantages to scaling it down that much?......

(1) SU doesn't fill in faces when drawing coplanar edges that form a close loop whenever one of the edges is shorter than something like ~1mm or ~1/16".
So creating at larger size can have its advantage right there.
Zooming in, panning and orbiting can get difficult at macro level.

(2)> ....I know it will reduce the file size,.....
Scaling up or down does not change file size other than that there may be the extra scaling factor saved with the scaled component. Insignificant amount of bits!!
Scaling the entire model doen't change the file size.
Details will not be lost.

hellnbak · 29 Oct 2010, 07:34

Thanks for your response. Actually, scaling it down reduced the file size by nearly one third. Go figure.

Gaieus · 29 Oct 2010, 07:48

That's weird as it should not have affected file size - just like Wodan said. Are you sure you did not purge some unused components/materials/styles in the process?

One thing can still be quite drastically influenced by scaling - texture maps. Textures "shrink" with the components/groups being scaled but of course, with a car, where one would (mainly) use colours only, this is not a problem.

Wo3Dan · 29 Oct 2010, 07:57

@hellnbak said:

Thanks for your response. Actually, scaling it down reduced the file size by nearly one third. Go figure.

As Gaieus said, somewhere along the line your model got purged.

hellnbak · 30 Oct 2010, 02:56

Man, you guys are good! Turns out I had in fact "purged" my model, moved all the hidden stuff to a separate file. I'd forgotten I'd done that, and since it was hidden I guess I never missed it when I scaled down my beastie. Can't get one past the experts!