Built and ready for finish.

Did you consider the VISIBLE ON ALL PAGES LAYER?

Here are a couple of things that I rely on
Happy sketchup-ing

Six Rules for Modeling in SketchUp.pdf

LAYER OUTLINER v7.skp

Bamboo me to
To reality

make a new style with axises off make sure you refresh

Did you try sandbox tools??

The scenes also use the hide and unhide functions of sketchup;
when you group it disrupts that function

This file may help

LAYER OUTLINER v7.skp

I use this all the time

http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=490834#p490834

Is the plane inside a group/component??

Scale it up then scale it back down. It will fill in the small polys

I watched the 1st installment
you may want to catch it to

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04tlxry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Replacement_(TV_series

router won't gcode??
there are a couple of plugin that will export gcode.

make the hole thing a group / must be a solid
then get TIG split to plane plug in and cut.

get this plug in it will help
SLBaumgartner: Layer Zero Fixup Tools v1.1

I used the fredo6 fredoscale tool
I think that you may want to look at creating a lower poly version of the rope and swapping it out with replace component in the component window.

bent rope.skp

If made up of components a simple 1.select all surfaces of components
2.then X by the number of each component
3.total it up and Bobs your uncle total area.

As gilles said fred06 scale

stair x 5.skp

please back save

star.skp