Hi everyone,
I’m working on some larger SketchUp models and noticed that the file starts slowing down when I add a lot of detailed furniture and components.
I’m already using components and trying to keep unnecessary details low, but I still get some lag when moving around the model.
What are your usual methods for keeping large SketchUp projects responsive? Do you use low-poly components, proxies, separate files, or any other workflow?
Would be interested to hear what works best for your projects.
Using a newer version of SketchUp usually helps, as there have been huge performance improvements lately. However, if you are downloading random assets from the 3D Warehouse, it only takes a single problematic object to ruin your workflow. Always look for the simplest object first and add detail only if required.
Hiding edges on objects you do not need to edit can also help if you experience viewport lag while moving around. If edits take a long time, it might be because your model has many objects made of lots of small pieces or sub-groups. Explode them so you only have a few layers of nested entities.
Contrary to popular opinion, making everything a repeated component or group copy does not always help performance. A classic problem is a tree or plant built from heavily nested components—for example, five main branches, each containing five smaller branches, three sub-branches, and multiple leaf instances. Because those instances are nested, the effective instance count multiplies through the hierarchy. You can end up with tens of thousands of entity instances despite the model containing relatively little unique geometry, which is expensive for SketchUp to process.
Sometimes, simply exploding that object into a single mesh or reducing the hierarchy to just the main branch components makes it much easier for SketchUp to handle. You sacrifice some of the efficiency and editability of instancing, but significantly simplify the entity hierarchy.
There are two opposite ends of the scale:
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An object with 120 million edges is problematic simply because of the sheer amount of geometry.
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An object with a sensible polygon count can perform horribly because it is made from tens of thousands of tiny groups, components, and nested instances.
One needs its geometry simplified; the other needs its hierarchy simplified. They are entirely different performance problems.
Yes, SketchUp has issues with higher polygon counts.
If it’s for rendering, then yes: placeholders for high-poly objects and high-resolution textures.
It depends on the renderer, but in V-Ray, for example, there are vrscene and proxy files. I usually use vrscene because it saves the materials along with the model. And for textures, I create low-res versions of the diffuse texture for placement; the V-Ray material gets the original textures.
If it’s scene geometry that needs to remain directly accessible, for example, because you’re still actively working on it, it can also help to segment larger objects and assign them to different tags so you can hide them (though, of course, this only helps with viewport performance, not file size/save times).
amen to that.
I worked on a file that came from Allplan recently.
every element in a separate independent group. You have a window made of 6-8 parts, you get 6-8 groups. you have 10 of these windows ? 60-80 groups. all with machine generated names (12-16 random characters). the file was 3M faces, and jeez it felt like churning butter.
people think about weight, KB, MB, but that’s quite easy to solve, smaller materials, and a slightly slower load / save time. but a high polycount, or worse, a poorly made high polycount can be hell
off course having a solid machine helps. look for single core CPU speed, because CAD is single thread.
a 4,1Ghz 8 cores will perform a lot better than a 3,5 / 16 cores. at least in sketchup / layout
but even at 4,1 Ghz, a poorly mate file will bring your work to a halt.