Typical Scenarios

• The model/design is almost complete
  
• The model has been stable until this point
  
• During the final stages of building the model, the user looks to embellish the environment - through the application of plants/trees/seats/neighbouring buildings
  
• 3D Warehouse models are used to embellish the surroundings
  

Typical Problems

• Model crashes when opening
  
• Model crashes when sent to render
  
• Model crashes when view is rotated
  

Possible Causes

Almost always, this is caused by the last few items/objects/materials that were added to the model. It's extremely common for badly made 3D Warehouse files to crash out Sketchup. It's worth noting that a badly built tree model from 3D Warehouse can contain ten times more polygons than your primary model. Therefore, adding many of these - for example trees to populate a garden, or chairs to populate a restaurant - can instantly complicate the model to the point it becomes unstable. This then manifests in increased RAM and processor usage and places greater demands on the graphics card to render the drawing to the screen.

Resolutions

• Sometimes it's possible to open the drawing in SketchUp on a machine with more powerful hardware (graphics card, processor & RAM). However, this is not always possible and isn't resolving the underlying issues.
  
• Unpick the last few stages of the model. Turn off layers with 3D warehouse objects in, turn off or remove complex objects (especially those which have been repeated). (Obviously it's not possible to do this without having a previously saved file or being able to open on another machine.)
  
• In short, the problematic geometry must be removed or at least hidden in order for the model to behave correctly.

Best Practice

• Always save files to your local drive at various stages of progress, to allow roll-backs. You can keep these back ups in cloud storage or on Trimbles own storage incase your hardware becomes damaged/unusable.
  
• Be extremely wary of using 3D Warehouse models for scene population. Choose models from reliable sources, such as your own objects or Dosch Design libraries wherever possible. Alternatively open 3D warehouse objects in a separate file and import from there, this allows you to check the quality as well as keep the file size down of your main project as files from 3D warehouse, even after being deleted, add to the file size. This can be helped by using the 'Purge unused' feature.
  
• Ensure hardware is up to spec and up to date for the tasks you require. Use Task Manager on Windows and Activity Monitor on Mac to see how much RAM and processor usage Sketchup is demanding.
  
• Try not to save directly to the cloud or to any location that is not your internal storage as this is known to cause corruption and other issues. If the file must be saved to a external storage then upload it once you have completed the days work and then download to your local save when you next need to work on it. 
  
• Ensure to keep up with updates for both the OS and SketchUp.

More Info

Sketchup Crashes When I go to Render