Blender's ****in' awful. Sketchup is better if you know what you're doing, IMO.
Anyone who responds to this in disagreement, great for you, I don't care, I'm not changing my opinion. You get what you pay for with Blender.

As for your models...first tip; use the "soften edges" command under "Window" - it'll get rid of all that geometry from showing up.
Next tip, stop working in straight extruded primitives. With Sketchup it's is a bit of a pain to get good, flowing geometry, but you can do it by extrusions - pull out a profile, scale it, pull it out again, scale it, etc, that's how you get organic shapes, or at least rounded metal ones.