Also remember that there doesn't need to be geometry at a distant location to cause this problem. For example, if you import a .3ds file, it is brought in as a component. Sometimes, the component or a sub-component will have an Origin point that is very distant, because of the original model's settings in Max. This isn't obvious at first because the .3ds component has a normal sized bounding box, but if you Edit the Component, you can notice that there is an internal bounding box (black dotted lines) that extends into the distance.
To solve this problem, I often will explode the imported .3ds component and subcomponents until it is just faces and edges. Then I will select all of the faces and edges and create a new component, resetting its internal origin point. Once that is done I often will edit the component and create sub-components if needed.
When you do this you may also have to reset the SketchUp model's axis. Especially if you are trying to geo-reference the model and the 'Get Current View' Google Earth layers are offset from the model's axis.
Hope that helps.
Cheers,
- CraigD
