Hi all. I’m new to Sketchup and have to say what a fantastic program. I’m not a professional architect or designer but with the help of the resources on this forum have been able to turn my archtect’s 2D CAD drawings into a full 3D model of the house we’re hoping to build. I couldn’t wish for more in relation to the main application.
I want to be able to carry my model around with me on my iPad Air 2 and so downloaded the app from the App Store. That was fine (and the sample model works ok) as was the download of my model from my Dropbox folder. However every time I try to load my model in the mobile app the app just crashes and throws me back to the home screen. It is a large model (about 400 mb) and I have tried to reduce it in size using the tips on this forum (including using the Thomas Thomassen CleanUp extension (which actually reduced it by over 100 MB)).
Have you used a lot of 3d warehouse components for furniture, plants or vehicles? Many of them are grossly over detailed and can add hundreds of thousands or even millions of edges and faces if repeated in the model. The portable viewer can’t cope with such large numbers.
See this thread for some examples of how I simplified without losing significant detail (and maybe you can, too).
The upper file size bound for viewing files on an iPad is probably around 80Mb. It’s tough to know for certain since file size is the result of a multitude of factors (such as polygon count, image textures, etc), each of which affect performance to a different extent. The Viewer apps also now support rendering effects like edge styles, section cuts, etc that affect performance when working with large files.
John some really useful tips in your thread. I’ll be sure to try some of them but you’ve guessed right I’ve probably gone over-board on realistic looking 3D components from the 3D warehouse. I realize that makes for a big file but it does look lovely!
When I used the CleanUp extension it performed a pretty deep clean but came up with one error message along the lines that there were a certain number of very small faces and that I should try to re scale by a large factor (can’t remember how much) and run the extension again. Do you know what that means and how I would do it?
Also since my post I’ve discovered the Kubity app which seems to handle my model very well even given it’s over 400 mb. It doesn’t have the same flexibility of the SU mobile viewer (you can’t for example turn individual layers on and off) but it does preserve the look of the model. You get a 2 day free licence and then it’s quite expensive to use after that. However I’m not sure if you can still view models imported during the free licence period after it expires. We’ll see!