Modelling meteoroid to scale in Maya LT

[NuclearFlox]

I have just recently started using Maya LT so forgive me if I am asking a silly question.

I am trying to model a meteoroid in Maya LT of about 8km in diameter and I am trying to model it to scale. Now I know this sounds like crazy-talk but I don't want a procedurally generated model or a model using a UV-map.

The largest (metric) unit type in Maya is meters, so I have set this to meters and try to create the model at its actual size.

For starters I created a sphere of 2 units in diameter and set the scale to 4000. This results in me seeing nothing. When I try to frame the object I just get a grey screen and I am unable to edit it properly. I feel that my model might be getting a bit to big for the application.

What is the best approach for modelling such large environments. Should I scale it down, add smaller details and scale it up in Unity? How would I best go about this?

[Rallion]

The easiest solution would be to scale it down, do all the work you need to do, and then when you're happy with it just scale it up and freeze transforms.

[NuclearFlox]

But is that also the 'best' way to go? ( I want to have a proper long term solution because I think I will be modelling number of large models like this. )

[Rallion · Accepted solution]

An alternative solution would be to change the Far Clip Plane under settings>cameras. There shouldn't be any downsides to this except for possible performance issues if you have large scenes with dense or complex meshes/deformations.

I don't, however, see any downsides to working at a more manageable scale and then scaling up when you're finished with the asset. You may find that traversing such a large scene will be tedious.

[NuclearFlox]

I also don't really a problem with scaling the model down and scaling it up afterwards. But because I am still learning to model properly and how to use Maya I would like to learn this the correct way from the start. 

Ps. Maybe it is just me or my lack of proper Googling skills on modelling matters but I can't seems to find much information related to large models.