The switching mechanism in ferroelectric liquid crystals takes place through domain formation and evolution, and therefore can be considered as a multi-dimensional process with variation in the director orientation over the area ofa switched region as well as with time. It has become commonplace to model the switching using very simple low-dimensional models which do not allow for this. We discuss why these appear to be quite successful, and how the modelling fits in with reality. It is seen that at reasonable switching voltages low-dimensional modelling works well in correctly predicting the time to domain nucleation. At higher voltages this nucleation time dominates and therefore the model is reasonable in this regime.