After erasing the weird 'rod' geometry...
I guess the left-over piece of text includes an empty string or perhaps just a space ?
Use the Outliner to open that Group in edit-mode.
Edit > Select All.
Entity Info now shows one piece of text.
Press <delete>.
That text is now gone.
The now empty Group is also gone...
Resolved.
My goal is to connect two offset rectangles with the speed and simplicity of using Curviloft - but without a reduction in aspect ratio. Want to avoid the extra step of manually drawing a path between said rectangles.
copy shortcuts.xml from this location:
C:\Users\mdurant\AppData\Roaming\SketchUp 2016\LayOut\shortcuts.xml
to this location:
C:\Users\mdurant\AppData\Roaming\SketchUp 2017\LayOut\shortcuts.xml
Do NOT copy the .plo files, that will crash LayOut.
Installing SketchUp using 'Run as administrator' is not a mere suggestion, it is the correct way to do it.
If it's not installed in that way unexpected flakiness and other weird things are well documented.
It is the 'official' installation policy...
FWIW, you always have to start with an existing style because it's impossible to have SketchUp open without a style. π You can modify a style and even change its name without creating a new style if it is in the In Model library.
You might try purging the associated SketchUp file of unneeded stuff and see if that reduces the size enough. Or you can upload it to DropBox and provide the link.