This is one reason why the general advice is; never change your active layer from Layer0 to anything else. You shouldn't be drawing (primitives/raw geometry) anywhere else than Layer0.

I never have the outliner open when I'm working... It always slows operations and navigation of the model.

Thanks for the reply, I will endeavor to research how I am not doing it right. I had a deadline, so I cobbled my way thru and got some prints out, my files are a mess, but the prints are at the Building Department.... I would really appreciate your insights, if it is possible I would be willing to post the files and glean your perspectives as this "model" has too many versions, the outliner crashes when I try to organize it, and I have way to many versions of "autosave-autosave-autosave-model"... thanks aloha red here's the file saved as "MHElectricalPlanUL(upper level) MHElectrical PlanUL~.zip

yes, did that previously any other thoughts?

understood

Thanks for that insight, I will give it a try too! There is nothing like real work practical experience and you are sharing that. Much appreciated. To meet a deadline I did it all by hand...and maybe still can get it in prior to construction. thanks aloha red

Wow, I could not highlight it, therefore it made it difficult to find. I went back to the outliner, and found it, probably as you have. The organizer seems a key component in making the model work efficiently, I am still trying to figure how to do that. thanks so very much for you help and insights. If you have any outliner insights I would be most interested in furthering my knowledge. aloha red

If you select the dimension tool then select the whole line you wish to dimension until its highlighted Blue. then drag the dimension line out parallel along the face or axis you wish to display it on and then click at the final position.

@gaieus said: I also have Shift+Ctrl+V for paste-in-place. It seems to be so obvious that indeed I've heard a lot of people having this setup. you must have your ctrl & shift crossed on your keyboard

Hi Red, (Before trying this,make a test file first). You can always "save (a component) as..." by right clicking on it (note that components are actually real, "independent" skp files "embeded" into your model - this will explain everything). Now you save the component as a separate skp file which you can open and make any changes to. Note that you need to keep the axes for the further steps. Now if you go back to your original file and right click on the original,still "unchanged" component, you can "Reload" it with (in this case obviously) the changed one you've just edited. In your particular case, use this technique as it fits you. Instead of this, you can always copy elements (simple Ctrl+C) and paste them in place from the Edit menu (I actually have Shift+Ctrl+V assigned to this function) into the new model file.

What is also causing crashes....running SketchUp with Firefox too. I stopped doing that AND significantly less crashing.... thanks aloha red

Barry, that really helped, thanks, and I will look into it as soon as I can. aloha red

the purge did not work, what I did was took everything that was on layers back to layer 0, put the entities in groups and components, and have tried to sort things out via the outliner. the file size dropped from 11.8 megs to 1.2! So that was a one thing that contributed to the large file size. I sent the file to my engineer, but he has yet to respond...it is the weekend. thanks again for your support and insights. aloha red