Can someone show step by step a model "reduction" on pillow?

[stoneshawnp]

Greetings.

I've been doing some modeling with sketchup for a while and I have pretty good luck with all the linear models.
However, I've been struggling with the more organic shapes.
I've purchased and downloaded a number of plugins, as well, so I am not opposed to trying that when it works.

At the same time, I am supporting my GF who is a new Interior designer. She can also make many models herself and is struggling to learn at same time.
The big challenge is she's Russian and it seems Russian's in general are less generous to share their knowledge & expertise with their country members.
The bottom line, is that I end up needing to find most of of the sketchup answers for her

Anyway, I pose here what I hope is a relatively strait forward question.
We don't like to "re-invent" every model for Interior design and prefer to focus on those which are strategic or necessarily custom. So, I have this pillow, (which could be representative of the general problem). It has many faces/vertices and saves as Sketchup 8 file of 5MB.. See attached file.
.. I cannot get file to upload properly, perhaps because of size, so here are 2 direct links to the 5MB .SKP file
-----> Option 1: http://www.box.com/s/51qsulsxe4cz8iecu9sy
-----> Option 2: http://www.box.com/shared/static/51qsulsxe4cz8iecu9sy.skp

Basically, it's gigantic for what it needs to be.

I've run the option for "Purge unused" from the faces & there are not large "textures" applied. It's basically, all about the geometry. Originally, this file has come from 3dsMAX and imported as .OBJ file into sketchup.. There are a couple of "optimization" options in 3dsMax (I have very little competence with this program also), and this helps a little, but in general is "breaking" the model. I am trying the "Cleanup" plugin now on a slightly larger version of this problem (and it claims to need 8 more hours to finish)... And most recently, I have stumbled across the VizUp tool (http://www.vizup.com/index.html) and will try to evaluate that. While I realize there is probably no silver bullet answer to this kind of question, I would appreciate some tips as to how to deal with this kind of situation for models in general (given what has already been tried). In the end, we are seeking to do semi-photo realistic rendering using V-Ray for Sketchup, so that's why there is some level of quality required in the model (otherwise, I think the render will be broken when texture is applied)..

Thanks for any feedback and expert tips.

Kind Regards
Shawn