SketchUp Pro model has disappeared, but file still exists and contains data yet again!

Thank you for your time, a true lifesaver

There is a general wisdom that you should always download entourage to a separate file to check it out, clean it up, and otherwise make it suitable for your project.

Deleting components from the model space does not eliminate them from your file. If you bring a couch in and decide later you don’t like it, deleting it from the model space is like hauling it up to the attic. It doesn’t get it off the property. And the materials associated with that component stick around, too. Purging unused stuff gets rid of them.

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While you’re editing, you might want to rethink the backdrop for this window. The clouds look kind of strange down by the ground :wink:

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Just to be clear, the issue is not that the people who uploaded models TO the 3D Warehouse neglected to purge the uploaded model. It is you, as the person downloading models FROM the 3D Warehouse, who is advised to purge every now and then (or better, download into a separate file and evaluate the downloaded model in that context, as mentioned by others above).

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Thank you, very knowledgeable people here, I appreciate your help, as you can tell I am a beginner.

They are made as stand alone models, as such they can afford to have a lot more detail than what is needed for a whole house assembly. Better to go high on the master and reduce as/when needed. The issue is then using stand alone quality models in a whole house assembly.

In that case I doubt you will be giving these items close-up shots, so their stand alone level of detail is neither needed nor beneficial, and actually quite the contrary, in such a model. Context of how the object is to be used dictates the level of detail it should have.

If for some reason you did want to give one of these items a close-up, to where the simplified version isn’t adequate, you can always make two or more versions, a ‘hero’ model with high detail for an assembly of the close-up scene, and one(s) with reduced detail for the construction model.

I intend to use this approach to teach myself animation. Someone gave me the full set of 270 plans to a Garratt locomotive and I modeled them up in Solidworks for practice. That will be my ‘hero’ model for static close-ups, and so is 100% accurate and huge, except I mostly left threads as smooth cylinders.

I can do some simplification versions in Solidworks, but primarily I’ll push translations into Sketchup of individual parts, sub assemblies, and the whole model as needed for given shots, and clean them up there, after which I’ll push them in to Blender.

I’ll do different models for different scenes, there will be no parts in a given scene except what shows up on camera and possibly anything off camera that is needed for a proper render. And the level of the zoom will dictate the detail level version I need for each part. So I’ll potentially have a different Sketchup and Blender model for each scene, though some files could get reused for similar scenes.

This way I can always go back to the ‘hero’ model if I find I need a higher detail level of a given part that I didn’t initially anticipate, like I decide to add a scene, or changed a camera angle, affecting what can be seen.