How can these (groups of) bodies collide? If the lower group is exploded, the individual parts collide but not as a group/component.

coll_example.skp

One example with Curviloft (Fredo6).
(The sides are not coplanar, should they?)

Two plate for solid example_b.skp

@daniel said:

That is probably the best modeled/rendered Blubb anyone has posted on the forum.

Thank you

If you don't like this answer, you can upload the model to get a more specific hint...

I like the debug modus of your chain model

I've compared my installed files with the zip and there were some files missing in my installation. Now it's working perfect, thank you!

Nice!
I've been here some time ago, it's an impressive fortress...

Tried with SU16-64 Win8.1-64:

C:\Users[username]\AppData\Roaming\SketchUp\SketchUp 2016\SketchUp\Plugins

@chanz said:

The reason I don't just use the drop vertices method is because the model has a lot of texture info that if I can preserve, I would like to.

@chanz said:

But the texture isn't super related. It's mainly the geometry.

Why don't you use the good geometry (drop vertices) and apply the texture to it (e.g. thrupaint)?

I don't see a texture in that example?

You can try to open it with your web browser (or assign the gif file type to it).

A quick test with the skatter plugin, some spheres with car paint and an indoor exr...

It's an animated gif, right click and save image as...

@wimve said:

Thank you for the fast answer.
But I ran into another issue: I can't download the shown plugins.
I get to the plugin store I see the plugin, I hit the "log in to get it" and nothing happends. Where do I have to log in again ?

There should be a popup window for the login, maybe it's getting blocked?

Besides Thrupaint (see link by Massimo), quad face tools (Thomthom) or SketchUV (Whaat) would work here too.

Reminds me of https://astro.uni-bonn.de/~dfischer/dark_sucker_2.html

You have to select proper SP shapes for the parts of the model.

You can create a construction line to get an inference on the blue axis...

Sandbox generated geometry is nothing special so every other geometry can be edited with the sandbox tools too.