[Designer] Cache Groups

[Grimofdoom]

When working on large projects, the more objects you add the more your performance drops. I definitely notice slowdown in my larger projects, despite running with an RTX 3070, Ryzen 2700 and 32GB of 3200Mhz ram.

My suggestion is to create a method where a group/folder can be "cached". Render *just* the group, and replace it in the project with that rendered image. Then add the option for how many "cache layers" there are (Render it larger for closer zooming, and smaller for further zooming). If you need to make an edit, then press to uncache, and it will delete the cached renders & place back in the originals like nothing ever happened and you can edit like normal.

One problem which may be noticeable, is the lost snapping points. This is a more difficult problem to solve, but really should be incredibly rare of a problem, and a potential solution (if needed) would be to add an option to right click a layer in the cached group/layer, and an option pops up stating "save snapping points"; this will not render in the layer but would keep its snapping points available.

My suggestion for how to implement this functionally in the UI, would be to add a button (Around the same area as new layer buttons) for converting a layer/group into cache layer/group. Place an icon on that layer that if clicked, uncache it.

[carl123]

2 hours ago, Grimofdoom said:

My suggestion is to create a method where a group/folder can be "cached". Render *just* the group

Not entirely sure what you are requesting but if it is Isolation Mode (soloing) you can do that as per the instructions below.... 

 

To activate isolation mode:

• On the Layers panel, hold down the and click on the thumbnail of an artboard, layer, group or object.

To exit isolation mode, press the Esc key, click another layer (from outside the isolated content, if the content is a group), or click away from the selection in the document view.

[Grimofdoom]

Nope. I am talking about temporary pre-rendering entire layers/groups so it reduces the hardware load on computer; because even with hardware acceleration, Affinity still has a problem with performance on larger projects.