Ok, got it. Love the name, haha! There’s no chance for me to uninstall V-Ray, since I use it every day, so I guess I’ll just have to go with a large SKP file. At least we’re sure there’s nothing unusual here. 
I think over a 1MB of Vray settings is a bit over the top…
It may only add them after it’s run, you could do a test and model in one, render in a copy if that was the case…
and never save as Template after running Vray…
Purge before sharing…
john
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John, that’s right in spirit but off in the details.
For each Component, SketchUp stores a single master copy of the geometry in the associated ComponentDefinition (same for a Group). The amount of data for the ComponentDefinition stays the same regardless of how many ComponentInstances are in the model. Then for each ComponentInstance placed in the model, SketchUp stores a Transformation (16 values) to tell where the instance is located, oriented, and scaled in the model (there is also some additional overhead such as name, material, layer…for each instance).
Counting the data required is much more complicated if you copy loose (non-component) geometry because SketchUp automatically merges loose geometry where two entities overlay or intersect. For example, two Edges that meet at a corner will share a single Vertex (3 values) where they meet, so they only need data for three end points, not four. A rectangle needs only 4 Vertices, not 8. If a copy places an Edge directly on top of an Edge from the adjacent copy, SketchUp will replace them with a single shared Edge. Each Face adds some more data linking it to the Edges that define it. For complicated geometry, counting up the data for a bunch of copies can be pretty confusing.
All this means that naive examples can easily lead to confusing results. The only thing that can be stated with absolute assurance is that when there is a lot of geometry involved in each copy and/or a lot of copies, Components will use less memory.
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steve, you know that I know that you know more of the inner workings, I was only aiming for spirit…
if we add in materials, textures, uv’s and then all the attributes that different plugins can tag on, we end up with a 3MB explanation…
I was also under the impression/delusion? that internally SU stores the bounds diagonal (2 values) for each entity…
john
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I too was aiming for spirit and too omitted a lot of details (some of which only those with access to the SketchUp source code can really know) - didn’t mean to offend you, sorry if I did!
My real point is in my last paragraph: I was trying to head off “yeah, but” counterarguments based on naive comparisons that don’t appreciate the complexity.
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