People model off photographs all the time. This really isn’t productive for everyone to keep telling you the software can do what you want it to, only for you to respond with, “Yeah, but I don’t think it can.”
For what it’s worth. I just installed this plug in and it lets you change multiple circle segment counts at once.
The drawing is done now, but the above plugin could have fixed my problem.
@Box I wonder why the rivets in this model use 48 segments in a base circle of just 5.3 mm diameter. @Chris333 is making a thing that will wind up being very small. The rivets will be less than a mm in diameter (in N scale, a rivet of 1 mm diameter would be hugely out of proportion). I venture a guess that if the base circle was 24 segments, and the quarter arc used in the follow me operation was six segments, that when printed on a 4K MSLA printer at 35 microns resolution, one would need a strong magnifying glass to detect any edges. Making the rivets components doesn’t reduce the size of the model for rendering or printing; it just makes it super convenient for drawing then as you show in your “Rivets.skp” file.
Also, and this is to @Chris333, once the model is painted, the paint film will obscure any of those small deviations from a true spherical surface. Chris, make a test: draw a panel with rivets made from hexagons. I defy you to tell they aren’t round when viewed at a distance of a foot. Heck, in N scale, that’s too close anyway…the observer’s breath will knock the model over. 
I don’t know why I am replying to this. Have you read the thread fully and understood the progression of it?
I chose 48 for the rivets I made simply to show that at even half the original 96 segments they were round. It was not my place to work out how detailed they needed to be for n gauge with his specific printer. By using components it is entirely possible to complete the model easily with 48 segments, whether there is any point is another issue. What eventually came to light was that he didn’t choose 96 because he wanted high detail, which had been mentioned earlier in the thread, but that it was the default an acad circle will import at.
No it doesn’t but it does make it possible to work with, the model with all those circles with 96 segments each is simply impossible to work with as raw geometry without a beast of a computer.
We have no argument, Box, you and I…at least not regarding this topic. I just noticed in reading this thread (yes, I did do that) that no one specifically pointed out that insisting on use the ACAD file is the root of Chris’s problem with processing speed. I’m sure I’m not alone here, in that I’ve made more than a few complex building designs that are smaller in edge/face count than his little N-scale railroad carriage. 
As I said:
So. There are no doubt many SketcuUp users who never had any formal instruction in its use, and when discovering a problem such as Chris’s, get massively frustrated. My guess is that the number of those people is quite a bit larger than those who bother to come to this forum with their problem. I also guess that many of those people do come to this forum to learn and pick up pointers without making comment. And it is no doubt extremely frustrating for the well experienced active participants here to deal with people who insist on blaming the software for what is after all a lack of knowledge about appropriate method of work. To berate such users for their ignorance or stubbornness might make them go away, but tends to give the perception that this forum is for experts only, or for those who, by some magical system have become the ins…looking down their noses at the outs.
There are all kinds of SketchUp users: those of us who have used it from the @last days to those who just came into the community, with backgrounds ranging high-end CAD software to some little proficiency (and an accompanying frustration) with Paint. We have several choices here when dealing with the latter group: we can be patient and helpful or we can be abrupt and condescending or we can stay silent and respond only to those who meet some certain in-group criteria.
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Quindi secondo te qualsiasi file importato da AutoCad andrebbe ridisegnato ex novo in Sketchup? Questa è pura follia! Un’enorme perdita di tempo che fa morire dalle risate chi l’import/export lo sa fare bene davvero come Rhinoceros. Non scherziamo! Sketchup da quando è passato a Trimble è rimasto indietro, non ha progredito per niente in queste cose. La gestione dei DWG/DXF è pietosa, non importa retini, non importa quote, non importa alcuni blocchi e se ti azzardi a esplodere il file per poterlo ricalcare rischi un bug splat. ma per piacere. P.s. come traduco io usa anche tu Google translate per piacere.
Hello.
This goes all the way back to the start of this discussion. I had an issue with an Autocad file that was similar to your original question.
I received a topographic file (many, many curves). Every contour (curve) was made of hundreds of segments. Even Autocad could barely handle it.
So, I thought I’d import it into SU hoping for a.better result. Nope, It opened, but I could barely do anything with it.
Then I remembered an extension I have called “Simplify Contours”
I was able to select a fairly large number of segments of each contour and run the extension which dramatically reduced the number of segments and turned the selection into a polyline ;welding the segments together. After doing this on the entire drawing the file size was reduced considerably. SU ran like a champ. Yea!
I believe I got the extension from the Sketchucation.com website.
I think it should work on any set of over segmented arch.
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Would that extension be called " Curvizard" ?
Thanks
Chris
@Box You have the patience of a saint…nuff said…
I found a version of it in The Extension Warehouse. The Warehouse is available through SketchUp under the Window menu drop-down or search for SketchUp Extension Warehouse on Google.
It’s not curvizard.
It actually didn’t take too long. Just triple clicked on one segment of a single curve to select the entire curve. I’m thinking you make the selection first, then run the extension.
You’ll need to install the extension through the Extension Manager in SU under the same Window Menu. You’ll find out how in SketchUp Help.