In SketchUp, Soften and Smooth both change the visibility of edges. Softening and smoothing helps add realism to your model and can even improve performance.
After selecting geometry in your model, you can open up the Soften panel and use the following options:
- Soften Coplanar - Turning on this option softens the selected geometry, hiding edges and changing the bounding edges into an entity.
- Smooth Edges - Turning on this option adds shading and gives the selection a smooth appearance. If selected alone, the edge remains visible.
- Angle - With one or both of the above options activated, the Angle slider lets you designate the maximum size of all angles to be softened or smoothed. The higher the setting, the more angles smoothed or softened.
For more information see Softening, Smoothing, and Hiding Geometry.
