Razz Welles has written an excellent detailed blog explaining relationships between prims, sculpt and mesh use.

OpenSim and Mesh - Understanding the Misunderstandings

http://razwelles.blogspot.fr/2012/06/opensim-and-mesh-understanding.html

thanks Sarah for having put this link on the forum

What I learn from all this is that we should use mesh in the future together with classic prims
For example use mesh prims only in case where they bring added value. On condition that you do not complexifie your mesh when not needed, there will not be an increase of the load on the sim
I think about adding decoration elements to buildings ... the basic structure of the buildings should be the classical prim .. using to much mesh elements should overload everything

I have been working recently on simple decorative mesh elements .. you can go to my home parcel on Teravus to check out how they look like

Other question .. what about founding a group "mesh development" on osgrid ... who want to participate

Bero

I think what he's saying that traditional prim users should not be frightened to use mesh in their builds 'as custom prims'. But in his example you can make say 12 mesh prims for the price of one traditional LL prim. These can be resized and textured just like a normal prim if you apply a separate material to each face. Yesterday Neb was able to place 1 Million mesh cubes on a region beating a previous record of half a million using traditional prims. If our mesh objects are made with efficiency.. then it can actually mean less lag for regions.