Like all SketchUp users, you want SketchUp to be fast. Whatever your experience level or modeling style, the way you model impacts SketchUp's performance, and this article explains how to create 3D models in ways that optimize performance. Behind the scenes, you can check how your computer stacks up against SketchUp's requirements. And tucked into SketchUp's preferences, you find a few settings that might also boost performance.

When you edit a SketchUp component, you can edit the component definition or the instance. When you edit the definition, you change every component instance. When you edit the instance, the component becomes an unique component and no longer reflects changes to its fellow components. For example, say you're modeling a picket fence. In your fence model, shown in the following figure, the Fence Panel component contains subcomponents: Post, Rail, and Picket.

When you transform geometry into a component, your 3D model has all the behaviors and capabilities of a component:

When you create a component, you turn SketchUp geometry into something special. A basic component becomes reusable and separate from other geometry. PRO If you’re a SketchUp Pro user, you can add attributes to create dynamic components. Users can then configure certain aspects of the component, or the component can add steps to staircases or pickets to fences as you scale the dynamic component.