Winforms: How to speed up Invalidate()?
- by Pedery
I'm developing a retained mode drawing application in GDI+. The application can draw simple shapes to a canvas and perform basic editing. The math that does this is optimized to the last byte and is not an issue. I'm drawing on a panel that is using the built-in Controlstyles.DoubleBuffer.
Now, my problem arises if I run my app maximized on a big monitor (HD in my case). If I try to draw a line from one corner of the (big) canvas to the diagonally oposite other, it will start to lag and the CPU goes high up.
Each graphical object in my app has a boundingbox. Thus, when I invalidate the boundingbox of a line that goes from one corner of the maximized app to the oposite diagonal one, that boundingbox is virtually as big as the canvas. When a user is drawing a line, this invalidation of the boundingbox thus happens on the mousemove event, and there is a clear lag visible. This lag also exists if the line is the only object on the canvas.
I've tried to optimize this in many ways. If I draw a shorter line, the CPU and the lag goes down. If I remove the Invalidate() and keep all other code, the app is quick. If I use a Region (that only spans the figure) to invalidate instead of the boundingbox, it is just as slow. If I split the boundingbox into a range of smaller boxes that lie back to back, thus reducing the invalidation area, no visible performance gain can be seen.
Thus I'm at a loss here. How can I speed up the invalidation?
On a side note, both Paint.Net and Mspaint suffers from the same shortcommings. Word and PowerPoint however, seem to be able to paint a line as described above with no lag and no CPU load at all. Thus it's possible to achieve the desired results, the question is how?
