You can do any of that… but keep it small in size. I usually create my own textures, but I’m heavy into the art side being in theatre. Sometimes a big texture is absolutely necessary, but not always. Consider what that texture does for your final look and it it’s worth the laggy performance.
You can also work in monochrome, switching back and forth between that and textured. It’s in the styles tab on the side. Also, in that mode you can see the when you have faces reversed, which is the darker grey/blue piece of the model, and it makes them easier to fix on the go.
My iPad is only a pro with an M1, and it does great on most files. I do, however, try to keep them under 10mb just for my own mindset.
Once I have finished model files, the “‘big” ones tend to be about 8mb by habit, even with full texture files.
Here is a chunk of my file storage so you can see. I’ve circled three with large texture files. These are theater settings, so there is a LOT of moving components, and full stage murals/ backdrops that I have painted in procreate, turned into a texture and moved into SketchUp.
Even with the hand drawn textures, my files are still nice and manageable.
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Just my 2 cents…but on iPad and Web App, turning off Edge Profiles can help. Open the Style Panel > Edge Settings, and Toggle Edge Profiles off.
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All good practices being recommended in this thread for keeping you model light and being aware of including low poly entourage. This is the best way to avoid bloated laggy models.
However, display and style choices also play a big role in helping your iPad keep up with very complex models. I generate and manage very high poly models in the course of my work, it is unavoidable. I build and maintain the models I use on SketchUp Pro, but I place copies on my M1 iPad pro which I drag around a job site deep underground. The current model I’m working with today is 228 MB, has 23,882,877 edges, and over 11 million faces, 11k components instances and 12k groups. It’s a large model, but my iPad runs it pretty well actually. I keep my tag structure tidy and all unnecessary tags turned off, I use almost exclusively color by tag or monochrome, keep shadows and profiles off of course, and I soften/smooth or hide all the edges I can. Sometimes it takes a moment for the screen to respond but in general it orbits and zooms pretty smoothly. This is an extreme use case of course but my point is that with careful use of your display options so you give the graphics engine every advantage you can, it is possible to work with very high poly models. In other aspects of my theatrical work I require detailed textures applied to surfaces and I find this grinds the iPad to a halt much faster than simply high poly geometry.
