# ArchiCAD to SketchUp - Best Practices

**URL:** <https://forums.sketchup.com/t/archicad-to-sketchup-best-practices/78107>\
**Category:** Pro\
**Created:** [October 1, 2018, 6:47pm UTC](https://forums.sketchup.com/t/archicad-to-sketchup-best-practices/78107 "2018-10-01T18:47:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![MikeWayzovski](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/sketchup/user_avatar/forums.sketchup.com/mikewayzovski/32/98346_2.png) [@MikeWayzovski](https://forums.sketchup.com/u/MikeWayzovski)\
**Post date:** [May 9, 2019, 7:30pm UTC](https://forums.sketchup.com/t/archicad-to-sketchup-best-practices/78107/21 "2019-05-09T19:30:14Z")

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> [@AK\_SAM](#):
>
> 89,000 unique groups

how about:

![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/sketchup/original/3X/2/0/2037ab3f88c592989bc5cd8d78f78c8e9199f632.png)

 ![Heavy%20modeling](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/sketchup/original/3X/c/a/ca81c772ef9fe929d09f1cce0980d16fb4bdeefe.png)

file is 2Gb…  
the client was wondering why his computer was lagging.

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**Author:** ![AK\_SAM](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/sketchup/user_avatar/forums.sketchup.com/ak_sam/32/126155_2.png) [@AK\_SAM](https://forums.sketchup.com/u/AK_SAM)\
**Post date:** [May 10, 2019, 1:41am UTC](https://forums.sketchup.com/t/archicad-to-sketchup-best-practices/78107/22 "2019-05-10T01:41:35Z")

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That is getting crazy big!

my current projects are  
44m edges, 14m faces, 284k components.

and  
7m edges, 2.3m faces, 40k components, 89k groups.

These sizes aren’t unusual for me.  
The first model , biggest, has trees and vehicles adding to the stats. But it operates smoothly (saving takes ages of course, 500mb). It has relatively few ‘nestings’.  
The second model with all the groups is the problem (buildngs imported from archicad) and simple things like showing the component browser window can can several minutes (every time).

So i beleive theres some back ground process to the way things get nested/referenced that slows sketchup down a lot…specifically the component and material browsers (materials is an awful situation because it pops up every time you use the Fill tool!)

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**Author:** ![AK\_SAM](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/sketchup/user_avatar/forums.sketchup.com/ak_sam/32/126155_2.png) [@AK\_SAM](https://forums.sketchup.com/u/AK_SAM)\
**Post date:** [December 22, 2020, 9:57pm UTC](https://forums.sketchup.com/t/archicad-to-sketchup-best-practices/78107/23 "2020-12-22T21:57:28Z")

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Two years on - is there any known solution to this?

BTW it’s not just Archicad that produces files with lots of unique groups or components; Revit, vectorworks and other software does similar.

It seems modern “BIM” products are geared to outputting unique groups/entities tagged with properties such as “light fixture G-14.1… light fixture G-14.2…”

It’s becoming a signficant barrier to workflow in a multi-software industry.

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**Author:** ![optimaforever](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/sketchup/user_avatar/forums.sketchup.com/optimaforever/32/49316_2.png) [@optimaforever](https://forums.sketchup.com/u/optimaforever)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2023, 12:50pm UTC](https://forums.sketchup.com/t/archicad-to-sketchup-best-practices/78107/24 "2023-05-20T12:50:07Z")

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For Revit the genuine rvt importer of SU 2023 is quite exceptional.

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