I haven't modeled plenums in OS yet, but I've had plenty of of experience troubleshooting geometry errors. First, if you aren't using the most recent stable release (currently 1.4.0) I would suggest updating your model. Second, you've already mentioned it, but I will echo the need to be very careful when creating OS geometry in the SketchUp Plugin. Make sure you entirely delete any mistakes and if you're adjusting spaces/zones make sure your lines recognize adjacent ones otherwise you might be left with surfaces that don't recognize each other - i.e. do not have complimentary outside boundary conditions. In general, I use the following workflow:
- Create geometry in SU, intersect surfaces, match surfaces, and visually check outside boundary conditions
- Create thermal zones either manually in SU, using the SU user script, or manually in OS
- Move to OS and run without HVAC by setting ideal air loads on to test the geometry. This can be done manually for all zones or by writing a measure to do it if your model has a lot of zones (happy to share mine if you need).
- Use the measure "Add Output Diagnostics" with "DisplayAllWarnings" selected - this will give additional details in the ERR file to troubleshoot any severe errors.
- If there are geometry-related errrors, you can use the "Search Surfaces" feature in SU to find those mentioned in the ERR file and fix.
- In extreme cases, I may manually delete OS objects from the OSM file, but this should be avoided because it can cause additional errors.
...hope that helps.