What do you mean by this statement.
First i did explode a lot inside the first group/component for a ‘clean’ start,
What did you explode
You might consider using components if file size is important. Because of the organic nature of a tree, one can get a passible version by simply rotating and scaling the same repeating geometry. With even two or three distinct branch components used in different scales and attitudes it can be very hard to recognize the repeating geometry in the chaos. This very quick version has one single branch component used over and over again and placed very roughly in about 5 min. It’s 1.8 mb (2.5mb in the 17 format)
Chestnut Tree Trunk Component 17.skp (2.5 MB)
I was going to try that but right now I was practicing with the branches
When i opened your model first time,there was a goup <Obj_000005> inside the group <Obj_000004> which was inside the group
So i’ve exploded everything, and regrouped them with a new name:
PS finished grouping, so with 2 components and 717 groups the filesize went up to 11MB
edited file:
Chestnut Tree Trunk- edit.skp (10.4 MB)
Why did you group the different branches separately? When I tried to group I grouped the main branches and all of the sub-branches of each main branch together. What was the reason for doing everything separate?
I am going to give what you said a try and see how it works. I have learned so much with this project. Thank you for your suggestions
Didn’t think about that, just started tripleclicking them branches to create them groups and ease my curiousity why the filesize would increase. Also wasn’t sure which branch needed to be further editted to your liking, since i am not a gardener nor tree expert 
Guess this way you can edit them seperately and combine/merge some to then move to another position if needed?
Thanks.
I have been able to use what you said to group everything into main branch with sub-branches that did not increase the file size more than 100 kb. I never thought of putting the groups into tags until you mentioned it.
I have SketchUp Make 2017. When I loaded your model into SketchUp Free and then downloaded it into Make it increased the file size.
I am thinking some of my problem is that Make has larger file sizes than newer versions. I have noticed anytime I convert a model to Make it increases the file size.
Glad to see i could made a small but possitive contribution to your problem.
Butt wow indeed, just saved a copy as SU17, and file size increased from 11MB to 30MB!?
0.0
Yes, the newer versions have a significantly better compression algorithm.
I thought that might be the case
Thanks for everyone’s help. I got the rough draft of the model I was going for.
American Chestnut tree with leaves minus many small branches.skp (10.5 MB)
I have to quit working on it for a while though
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