Slow display regeneration when disabling AcDbVisibilityOverrule

[fehrsZBFB9]

Hi Community,

I'm using a AcDbVisibilityOverrule to temporarily hide all Entities in the drawing except a small set.

This Process is slow for big Drawings. Do you know a way to speed up the unhiding process?

Thanks in advance,

Martin

[nick83]

the fastest way to hide/show entities is to use AcDbEntity::setVisibility(AcDb::kVisible/AcDb::kInvisible)

[fehrsZBFB9]

I tried to hide all entities in the database traversing the database and call setVisibility for them. This lead to a delay when hiding AND unhiding the objects. Using AcDbVisibilityOverrule only lead to a delay when unhiding the objects when calling. I also tried to use a AcGiDrawableOverrule with empty worldDraw and viewportDraw routines. It worked but wasn't faster.

Thanks anyway. As you said, there seems to be no faster solution. I compared it with the block editor. It's equaly slow when closed.

Maybe I can limit the area of my Jig operation. Currently the user can zoom out as far as he likes. This doesn't make sense. When the area is limited, I could only hide entities inside that area. Which could be a lot faster. Any ideas about that?

Thanks.

Martin

[tbrammer]

I would also expect that using AcDbEntity::setVisibility() is the most performant way to change visibilities.

The show/hide performance should be comparable to thawing/freezing layers.

When you tried setVisibility(), did you force the GS (graphic system) somehow to update each entity after you changed its visibility? I.e. by calling AcDbEntity::draw() / AcDbEntity::recordGraphicsModified() / acedUpdateDisplay() / actrTransactionManager.flushGraphics() / acedRedraw() / ...?  This would slow down the performance. It is better to do all changes within a transaction and let the GS do the update for all modified entities at once.

You might want to test performance with this simple code that hides/shows all modelspace entities on layer 0:

void visOnLayerId(AcDbObjectId idLayer, AcDb::Visibility vis)
{
	AcDbDatabase *pDB = acdbHostApplicationServices()->workingDatabase();
	AcDbObjectId IdModelSpace = acdbSymUtil()->blockModelSpaceId(pDB);
	AcDbBlockTableRecord *model;
	Acad::ErrorStatus es;
	if ( (es=acdbOpenObject(model, IdModelSpace, AcDb::kForRead)) == Acad::eOk )
	{
		AcDbBlockTableRecordIterator *pit;
		es = model->newIterator(pit);
		if (pit)
		{
			for (pit->start(); !pit->done(); pit->step())
			{
				AcDbEntity *entity=nullptr;
				es = pit->getEntity(entity, AcDb::kForRead);
				if (!es)
				{
					if (entity->layerId() == idLayer)
					{
						if (entity->visibility()!=vis)
						{
							if (!entity->upgradeOpen())
								entity->setVisibility(vis);
						}
					}
					entity->close();
				}
			}
			delete pit;
		}
		model->close();		
	}	
}

void cmdHide()
{
	AcDbDatabase *pDB = acdbHostApplicationServices()->workingDatabase();
	AcDbObjectId idLayer0 = acdbSymUtil()->layerZeroId(pDB);
	visOnLayerId(idLayer0, AcDb::kInvisible);
}

void cmdShow()
{
	AcDbDatabase *pDB = acdbHostApplicationServices()->workingDatabase();
	AcDbObjectId idLayer0 = acdbSymUtil()->layerZeroId(pDB);
	visOnLayerId(idLayer0, AcDb::kVisible);
}

[fehrsZBFB9]

It is not suprisingly slow. It is slow, because there are more then 11.000 Entities in the drawing. These objects are of custom type. They work like a block reference, pointing to an unonymous block. This block contains a polyline and a hatch. So there are about 33.000 entities and 11.000 blocks involved.

I'm searching for a way to clear the view without processing all entities. Maybe by limiting the working area. Or for maybe I can delay the processing in some way not unhiding them all at once.