I am looking for a Sketchup-Plugin / Online converter / Script to reduce the amount of detail in a design. I have downloaded a 3.3Mb design from thingiverse.com and when I import it in SketchUp, it slows down the computer. SketchUp really becomes sluggish. I have already tried to export the model to STL again with dimensions set to mm, ran a homemade script to round each number to 1 decimal, and import it again. After import I deleted the “coplanar edges” and guess, it gets bigger than the original, file size approx. 10Mb.
I wouldn’t know an algorithm that can reduce the size. If you do please tell me how.
A plugin would help, but I only install plugins that are in readable text. The only plugin that I could find that promises what I want, named “Skimp”, is encrypted or compiled.
Call me a paranoid but I don’t run scripts from the internet before I have seen in code what they do.
I have tried to import the .stl in blender but blender shuts down during the import.
Is there anyone who has an idea how to safely reduce the size or the amount of detail?
Try MeshLab. I don’t use it often, so I generally have to read documentation of some sort or another every time I do. The term of art you are looking for is “decimation” and that should help find many online tutorials on how to use meshlab to reduce polygon count. Here’s one from shapeways chosen basically at random. Here’s another. There are also plenty of videos. Good luck! 
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Thanks for the tip Michael,
MeshLab is also a lot faster than other tools I have used so far.
I was able to reduce the amount of edges with:
- Menu: Filters/
- Remeshing simplification & reconstruction/
- Simplification Quadric Edge Collapse Decimation
It took me a while to find that 
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