Three ways to keep your SketchUp model running quickly - Settings and Efficiencies
[Instructor] When using SketchUp it's important to keep an eye on a few settings just to make sure that our model rends quickly and smoothly. So here's a few tips to keep your SketchUp model running quickly. First tip is to use styles that have a green clock on the icon. So I'm going to open my styles window. You'll find some icons that have a small green clock in the lower right hand corner of their thumbnail. These are fast styles that use settings to render more quickly as you zoom, orbit and move throughout your model. You'll notice that some styles don't have these green clocks by them. And those are fun to show other people your model or present it, but they're not great for active modeling. A side note on the styles. You want to limit your use of the shadows. So under view, shadows and fog, you want to limit your use of shadows and fog to only presentation scenes and styles. So as you're actively modeling, make sure that those are turned off, because that will significantly slow down SketchUp as it tries to process them each time you make changes to the drawing or you change the view. So I'll turn those off. Under view, shadows. The next tip is to use models with a smaller file size. So if I'm bringing in a model from an external source, like the 3D Warehouse, be sure to keep an eye on the file size. For example, if I click on this chair and check out the polygon count and the file size, I just want to make sure that I keep that number fairly low. There really isn't a magic number here, just want to keep an eye on it, because the larger the number, the more it will weigh down your file. If you find something that you absolutely must use in your model, feel free to bring it in, but then put it on its own layer, and turn that layer off for your working scenes. Only turn that layer back on when you're ready to use it or present your file. Lastly, to keep your SketchUp model running quickly, you want to make sure that you purge your model periodically. So when we purge our model, we're clearing out items that have been deleted. So if I open my colors window here, and I click on the home button, I can see the colors and model. So some of these colors are no longer actually being used in the model. They were just there at some point. So just because I take a texture or a color out of the model, doesn't mean it's deleted from the file. Same goes with layers. If I add a layer. I'm going to add a layer and call it chairs. Nothing's living on that layer, but it's added to our file size. Same goes with the styles. All of these styles have been used at some point. They're no longer being used, but they're still in the file, so we need to go ahead and clear out all of these lists by purging. So what we can do is go to window, model info, scroll down here to statistics, and click purge unused. And as I do that, go ahead and keep an eye on these lists, and you'll see that they all shrink. Only what is currently being used in the file. That's going to keep your file size smaller, and your lists become a little bit more manageable as well. So these methods will all help ensure your model rends quickly and smoothly.