Working with complex drawings

As with any other graphics application, working with very complex drawings in Flash can slow performance. If your drawing is extremely complex, try drawing it in several logical pieces and then assembling those pieces into your final drawing.

Whenever you move lines or fills on the Stage, Flash looks at all of the lines to see where they intersect and all of the fills to discard overlaps and calculate for connecting lines. Also, when dragging lines or fills, Flash temporarily floats these above the Stage. This can take a few moments. Grouping reduces the amount of work Flash performs because it doesn't connect the lines in separate groups.

To speed up screen redrawing:

Choose a display option:

	Choose View > Outlines or View > Fast.
	Use View > Antialias and View > Antialias Text only to preview your work. These options are much slower than View > Outlines and View > Fast.
	Use simple line styles when drawing or stroking shapes. Fancy line styles such as stipple and hatched can take longer to redraw than simple line styles.

To speed up selecting and moving:

1	Choose the arrow tool and select elements that comprise logical groups.
2	Choose Modify > Group.

To speed up creating fills:

Do any of the following:

	Close any gaps manually and use Don't Close Gaps modifier of the paint bucket tool so Flash won't look for gaps to close.
	Zoom in on the specific portion of the drawing you want to fill.
	Flash only finds gaps in the visible portion of the window. Choose View > Work Area and View > 100% to see the maximum area.