layerling no longer freezes with large meshes

[henmedia]

Until now, layerling did all of its heavy work on the same "main thread" that draws the view and answers your clicks and keys. While it was calculating, it could do nothing else: the editor froze, you could not turn the view, click or type.

Since 1.105.0 there is a second thread, the geometry worker. It does the heavy work in the background, and the editor stays free. The status line says "Calculating… you can keep working" meanwhile. The result is exactly the same as before. If the worker cannot start, say with an old offline copy, layerling does the work itself as it used to: then it freezes briefly again, but nothing breaks.

What it brings

Measured on an ordinary laptop (Ryzen with built-in Radeon graphics). The numbers show how long a click has to wait before layerling responds; from about 0.2 s you notice it as freezing.

What you do	Before	Now
Cut a hole through a large imported mesh	frozen 1.6 s	0.16 s
Merge two large meshes	1.3 s	0.14 s
Split a large mesh	2.1 s	0.14 s
Group many round bodies with holes	0.4 s	0.05 s
Print estimate in the export window	1.0 s	almost 0
Simplify a mesh (slider)	0.3 s	almost 0
Import an OBJ file	1.3 s	0.24 s
Export 3MF	1.4–1.5 s	0.5–0.9 s
Open a .lyl file	0.36 s	0.17 s
Switch the section view on	0.4 s	0.25 s

The price: until the result is there, it sometimes takes 0.2 to 0.4 s longer, because the data has to travel to the worker and back. Since you can keep working meanwhile, you hardly notice it.

When you will feel it

• Clearly: when you work with large imported meshes: scans, models from Printables or Thingiverse, figures traced from a picture. Cutting, merging and splitting used to freeze for seconds there; now everything stays usable.
• Clearly: with the print estimate and with Simplify on large meshes. Neither freezes any more.
• Noticeably: when importing OBJ files, exporting 3MF and opening designs with imported meshes.
• Hardly: with ordinary designs made of boxes, cylinders and text. They were fast before, and practically nothing changes there.
• Not at all: with memory problems of very large files (Importing actual Tinkercad geometry / parts #683). The worker makes the calculating smoother, but it does not need less memory.

Still freezing briefly: the 3MF export through the export window (about 0.9 s), reading 3MF files (0.6 s) and the STL export (0.8 s). These are the next ones I will look at.

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