Thanks to Chris and Jean for their suggestions. Very helpful.

I had already purged the file when I wrote my post of Dec. 8. Since then I have spent a few days working at or near the event horizon of my computers capabilities. Frequent freezes and bug splats and then 10 minutes of waiting to reload the file.

However, I have managed to run an animation. I had to choose between turning the shadows on and and trees layer off, or all layers on and shadows off. Everything on and my computer would go into full rebellion mode. But I still love it.

I created a video that can be seen here: http://www.aikenresidentialdesign.com/ARD%20modeling%20service.html (bottom of the page).

I think I will follow up on Chris's suggestion to try substituting 2d trees for 3d trees and to see how much of the quality of realism is lost. I have seen some nice 1Mb trees in the warehouse that might be just the thing. If I can create a file that is less temperamental I will be able to fix a lot of imperfections I see in the current video without the high level of frustration of the past few days.

Thanks again.

Karl

Or maybe not, my knowledge base in Sketchup is not sufficient enough to be sure. The file I have created is about 191 MB in size. In addition to geometry I have created, there are numerous 3d objects I have downloaded from the 3d warehouse and other sources. These files are grouped in layers like people, trees, bushes and vehicles. I can work with all the layers turned on except the trees layer, or with the most layers turned off and trees on, but no shadows. With everything turned on, my computer goes into a cyclical process of white display area while the processor works for 10 to 15 seconds, followed by the proper screen display for about 10 seconds, and then continual repeat. No recourse at this point but to shut Sketchup down.

I am guessing the problem is: (1) I don't have enough computer, or (2) I have made errors in creating the model or there were faults in the imported models.

1. My computer runs on Vista 32 with 3 GB of ram. I have pushed the virtual ram to 6 GB. The processor is a dual core E8500 running at 3.16 Ghz. The video card is a ATI Raedon HD 5700 with I think 1 GB on memory.
2. I know I shouldn't be using 3D trees, but the scenes in the animation I am attempting to create would not be right using 2D trees in my estimation. I have tried eliminating the trees one at a time to see if that would be a fix. No improvement.

At this point I can not run the animation or export even a jpg with all layers turned on with or without shadows. Was able to capture a screen shot though. See attached. I would appreciate any advice as to what the nature of the problem is and how best to fix.

Karl

First, let me thank Dave, Thomas and TIG for their willingness to investigate and provide insight. And while they they could not provide the Magic Bullet solution I was hoping for, the information they provided turned out to be very helpful. Eventually I was successful at draping the overlay of the parking layout onto the cad created ground model.
I will briefly explain the "fix" for those who might find themselves in the same situation.

The cad ground model was created by placement of shot points relative to a properly scaled jpg. satellite view of the property that included superimposed grid lines at 5' increments. The parking overlay was created in sketchup, exported to my cad program, and superimposed over the ground model. My thought was to assign shot points at locations where the jpg grid lines crossed over lines in the parking overlay so as to minimize the number of faces when exported back to sketchup. Big mistake.

Location errors that occurred from importing and exporting between the programs is what made for all those short short lines segments. When I went back and moved all of the shot points into free space, (that is not on or near a parking overlay line), the problem was solved. Drape worked without problem with this slightly modified ground model.

Thanks again, would not have figured it out without your assistance. Karl.

I am attempting to drape a moderately complex parking layout onto a ground model I created in my cad system. Each time, Splat! Have tried exploding all. Only one layer coming in from my cad model. Tried scaling up 1000x without success. Not sure what to try next.

Aiken Library Ground Model 5 from Softplan no Faces.skp