Beam Bench Docs

App is slow on large files

Big imports or projects with thousands of objects slow everything down.

You see

You open a complex SVG (many paths, many nodes) or a project with thousands of objects. The app becomes sluggish, selecting takes a moment, panning lags, edits feel delayed.

What is happening

Beam Bench renders the canvas every time the project changes. Lots of geometry means lots to render. Some operations (selection bounds, layer membership lookups) scale with object count.

Fix

If the SVG has unnecessary node detail

Many SVGs are exported with way more nodes than needed (every curve sampled as ten Beziers when one would do). Reduce:

  • Use the Trace Image dialog on a rasterized version with sensible Min Node Distance if the original is too dense.
  • Open in Inkscape and use Path → Simplify before importing.

Organize complex artwork

Groups and the Outliner make complex projects easier to navigate, but grouping does not remove the underlying geometry. Simplify unnecessary paths or image resolution when processing itself is slow.

If many objects are on the same layer with the same settings

The Material Library and layer-level settings make this fine logically, but the canvas still draws each object. If they share appearance, consider merging into a single path (Boolean Union via Boolean Assistant) where it makes sense.

If you have many large raster images

Large rasters consume memory. Downsample source images to the detail the job needs. Decoded images and generated raster targets are each limited to 67,108,864 pixels. Jobs that would produce more than one million individual burn runs stop with guidance to reduce DPI, physical size, or fragmentation. A small compressed image can still expand beyond the limit.

If your computer is the bottleneck

  • Close other heavy apps.
  • At least 8 GB RAM for complex projects.
  • Integrated GPUs work but discrete is faster for the largest projects.

If panning / zooming specifically is the issue

See Canvas stutters, that page covers the canvas-render path directly.

Verify it worked

  • Project loads in reasonable time.
  • Operations feel responsive.

Still stuck?

On this page

You seeWhat is happeningFixIf the SVG has unnecessary node detailOrganize complex artworkIf many objects are on the same layer with the same settingsIf you have many large raster imagesIf your computer is the bottleneckIf panning / zooming specifically is the issueVerify it workedStill stuck?