Thanks for the suggestions. What I wound up doing was copying the component out from the model, exploding it, sub-dividing it into phases, and making each phase a unique component with the same basic name as the full deck. So I would up with components: Deck L1 Deck L1.1 Deck L1.2 Deck L1.3 This way I could also turn on the un-seamed deck at the end to remove the visible joints easily.

Hi folks. A possible workaround to keep the resolution at its maximum (not loose anything from the original picture) would be to use some image editor to cut the original image in chunks of 1024 x 1024 (or 2048 x 2048 if possible). After that, you can import all the chunk one by one in SketchUp and reassemble the picture. Just ideas.