Case in point

I have a waterslide 3d cad model- file size approx. 3 MB

After importing this one object into a virgin SketchUp session it swells to a 24 MB file which is extremely heavy when creating an environment with numerous elements.

I need to have the multiple styles available with in the same view. Often I have CAD objects that have numerous edges. This makes the object look black because they appear to block up and fill-in the object. I want to tell these more complex objects to display no edges while allowing the numerous subtle edges to be seen on other objects in the environment model.

What is the best approach (or is it possible) to apply different edge styles or line weights to various objects or components within the same model?

I want to solve a recurring obstacle.

What is often a small file in CAD (3d objects for instance) becomes really large and unwieldy when imported into SketchUp. Will someone please direct me to some forum threads that address this? I am not sure if I should trim or edit objects somehow in CAD or if there are Ruby scripts to help or if SketchUp itself will solve this.