Clipping problems on largish landscape model?

I’m a Sketchup laymen at best and am trying to build a somewhat large model of a walled city on a mountainside. Recently my models started clipping severely when I try to zoom in. The faces disappear as the camera moves towards an object, then suddenly the view is inside the object, past the face I’m trying to see. I’ve watched the videos and read the entries; looking for unnecessary geometry, changing the field of view, model too far from origin, model too small, etc. The only thing I can figure is maybe the model is too large, but I’ve resized it down and the clipping remains. I’ve tried selecting all and copy+pasting it to a new file, but the clipping stays. I was wondering if anyone has any novel ideas?

The common reasons for clipping are the model being positioned at a great distance from the origin or at least the part of the model you’re zooming into, some little bit of stray geometry set at a great distance from the origin, or the Camera being set to Parallel Projection. Do you have any of those situations?

What happens if you hit Zoom Extents?

From what you describe, I infer that you are using perspective not parallel projection. In that case, SketchUp zooms by moving the camera closer to the model. At some point the image plane of the camera comes to be inside the model, producing the clipping you are seeing. Just like a real camera, it can’t image things that are behind the camera. In many situations this is actually desired behavior, for example, to move inside a room.

To make a part of the model look larger without the camera having to be so close, you can change the focal length just like using a telephoto lens on a real camera. Unfortunately, the ability to do so is a bit obscure: you select the Camera->Field of View menu item and then type a length value such as 200mm. The label on the measurements box will change to “Focal length”, indicating that SketchUp understood what you entered. Just as with a real camera, you will now be able to make the model larger in the view without needing to move the camera (i.e. zoom) quite as close.

or hold shift key with the zoom/magnifier tool as you use left mouse button. will keep you in same spot but change focal length.

The zoom tool has always been a misnomer as it is really tracking/dollying in not “zooming” as the tool suggests.

I’m pretty sure we would need to look at the model to find the specific issue.
Attach it if smaller than 3mb, which I doubt, upload it to the warehouse and link it back here or upload to dropbox or similar and link here, or send a link via PM to one of us if you don’t want to make it public.

As far as I can tell there are no stray bits of geometry. I’ve clicked Zoom Extents, and it doesn’t show any outliers. The camera is set to perspective, yes.

You’re correct it is using perspective, however I have tried the camera focal length, from as small as 5mm all the way through 120mm or so, and still the same clipping. At what I would estimate to be about 10 meters out from a corner, for example, the model starts to clip.

I think you’re probably right, the file is bigger than 3mb, somewhere around 9. Here’s the google drive link to it:

I think I did that right. Thanks for your help!

To start with
You should be using groups and components to separate your geometry.
On the above note you are using layers incorrectly.
You should be orientating faces correctly, blue/grey is the back face.

One workaround to clipping issues while making large cities is to make your components in separate SketchUp files.

After updating the model, you can update the component in your large map.

OK, so if I understand you right, I should go through and turn all the models into groups to separate them from each other. Then once in many small groups, I can assign them to layers to toggle visibility on and off to help Sketchup run smoother, hopefully eliminating the clipping issues? Oh, and make sure all of the models have the proper white “outer” faces oriented outward?

If I save all my components as separate Sketchup files, should I still place them on separate layers in the big main model file? In order to toggle visibility on and off? Sorry for the obvious questions, Sketchup is just somewhat non-intuitive for me. Thanks!

Assigning components to layers will help with organization, but it’s not necessary in some cases. If you anticipate needing to toggle the visibility of something frequently, like vegetation or buildings, then yes it’s necessary in those situations. But that’s just my opinion. Others might prefer you sort everything into layers to keep it organized.

Well I sorted everything into separate components, and save those components as individual .skp files. To the best of my abilities I then separated the components onto different layers to be more organized and able to be toggled off visually. However the clipping problem persists. When I open each component’s separate .skp file, I can zoom-in no problem, but in the main model file with everything in it, the image clips as I zoom in, even with only one layer visible. Having every component saved as it’s own .skp makes fine-tuned editing possible (and may even allow the software to run smoother, I don’t know) but I still wish I could get it to stop clipping in the main model. Some items are easiest to build in the main document, not as separate files to be imported after. I could start with a fresh document and try to load all the components into it, but I have no idea how to align all those irregularly placed components correctly to each other. Very frustrating, I’m not sure why I don’t understand this software, but the help so far has been above and beyond.