Re: [GM-help] performance

[Bob F. <bfr...@si...>]

On Mon, 6 Nov 2006, ransom82 wrote:

> In my current project, I am trying to get nice bitmaps out of my CAD/CAM
> application (AlphaCAM if anyone is interested). To do this, I use convert
> with a null file, and call -draw with lines or ellipses for every line and
> arc in my drawing.
>
> The file I am currently working with generates about 250 drawing primitives.
> This seems to take considerable time to generate a bitmap (about 30secs on a
> fast computer). Is there any way to make this faster? Would a path be faster
> than lines and ellipses?
>
> On this file I am only doing about half of the geometries I have, and other
> files could have many times this amount, so I am interested in making this
> more efficient.

GraphicsMagick's drawing environment is really a 2D "rendering" 
environment rather than traditional vector drawing environment.  As 
such, it uses a rather exhustive approach which usually produces 
very attractive results, but which is rather slow.

I suggest that you consider outputting Postscript or PDF from your 
application and using Ghostscript to render to a raster image, or 
output SVG SML and find a fast SVG to raster translation tool.

GraphicsMagick is useful for a great many things, but for some things 
other tools are more efficient.

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
bfr...@si..., http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/