Hi. Just finished my latest, a bit larger layout (The one I bragged about lately). After I added polygons to pour the remaining board estate with copper, PCB slowed down significantly. Frames per second as measured with the benchmark() action went down from very usable 16 FPS (*) to 1 FPS. Teh thin_draw_poly option from the setttings menu improved visibility but did nothing to the speed. This is no surprise, since it draws the same objects but with very transparent color.
To get the GUI workable, I had to fall back to the old layer-hack: Move the polygons to separate layers and make them a layer group of their own. With this set-up the polygon layers can be selectively switched off and the GUI becomes snappy again. Since this is a four copper layers, I ended up with eight regular PCB layers. Of course, I have to add the polgon layers to the layer group of the original layers before export or DRC. In addition I have to save and revert to force recalculation of polygons. Polygons have been slowing down the PCB GUI ever since I used the application for the first serious project in 2006. Certainly, this has hit others before. Much has been done to improve polygon rendering. But obviously, these critters still have the potential to severely handicap the GUI. Two questions: * Is there a technical reason to not provide an option to selectively not draw polygons at all. Kind of like hide_names in settings? * Is there a technical reason to not provide a button for polygon recalculation? These seemingly simple features would make the above hack obsolete. ---<)kaimartin(>--- (*): Thank you so much, Peter! -- Kai-Martin Knaak Email: k...@familieknaak.de http://pool.sks-keyservers.net:11371/pks/lookup?search=0x6C0B9F53 not happy with moderation of geda-user _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
