5 Ways to Speed Up Your SketchUp Models

Sketchup is an amazing tool for building 3D models. It’s free to download, easy to use, and completely intuitive. In my opinion, it’s the best 3D modeling software available right now. However, this doesn’t mean SketchUp doesn’t have some weaknesses.

One of the things SketchUp really struggles with is maintaining high speeds when models start getting really big. The more faces, lines, etc there are in a model, the more SketchUp has a hard time running quickly. Really large, bloated models can take a lot of time to load and navigate. However, there are some smart 3D modeling tactics you can use to make your SketchUp model run more quickly.

Styles are a great tool in SketchUp for making your model look more artistic. However, as a tradeoff, when you use a style with a lot of different lineweights and visible points, it’s just more stuff SketchUp has to render. You can select a lightweight style to reduce the amount of geometry that SketchUp has to render, meaning your model will run more quickly.

In order to select a different style, we’re going to use the styles section of your tray. Look in the tray and open up the styles section. Select the “Default Style” option for a really lightweight style.

Once you’ve selected “Default Style,” click the “Edit” tab in the styles section of the tray, then make sure “Profiles,” “Depth Cue,” “Extension,” “Endpoints,” and Jitter are unchecked. This minimizes the number of objects SketchUp has to render every time you move around your model, meaning that SketchUp can now run more quickly.

SketchUp’s 3D warehouse is a fantastic repository of different models that you can download into your model. However, the tradeoff is that not all these models are modeled with smart modeling practices, or they’re modeled to a level of detail that you don’t need in your model, leading to large file sizes. Select models with a smaller file size when working with items in the 3D warehouse, and realize that most objects you put in the background of your model don’t need to be that detailed anyway.

If you’re looking for a good place to start, open up the 3D Warehouse and search for “SketchUp” in collections. Most of the models in the warehouse from SketchUp are modeled with really smart modeling practices, so they load quickly and don’t bloat your model.

Often when working with objects from the 3D warehouse, you’ll download models that come with a lot of extra leftover stuff that you don’t really need, or you’ll delete an object from the 3D warehouse and it leaves a lot of materials, layers, groups, etc. Use the “Purge Unused” item in the model info to delete this unused stuff out of your model.

Start by going to the window toolbar at the top of the page, and select the option labeled “Model Info.” In the window that pops up, click on the item labeled “statistics.” At the bottom of the window, there will be a button labeled “Purge Unused.” Click this button to delete out all of the extra left over groups, components, materials, etc, out of your model, reducing your file size and helping things load faster.

These are some of the strategies I use to keep my models running quickly. What are you doing to speed up your models? Let me know in the comments below!