Vertices and Triangle in Unity - problem with counting.

I made a primitive sphere with 42 faces (triangles) in another 3D application (Meshlab) and imported it into Unity.

The preview picture in the Inspector looks the same.

However, it reads 238 vertices, 80 triangles!

whoa... hold on there Unity. That doesn't even make mathematical sense for a regular polygon.

The issue is that I'm hitting the 65K ceiling a lot sooner than I think I should.

Help please?

It's not a problem with Unity. Unity is actually telling you what data it is sending to the GPU for processing, and there are a number of ways that number can increase.

Check this forum thread and in particular the video linked towards the bottom of the thread. It should explain everything for you.