speeding up loading of .craft files

[steuben]

I'm working to design some large ships/stations. The one I'm working one will probably be in the 7 to 8 kilopart range, before welding. But they are taking a while to load up in the VAB/SPH, 10 minutes atleast.

Are there any suggestions, mods, hidden settings on how to buy myself some more performance in designing them? Right now I think I've got all the relevant setting all the way to the left. 

And because I know it will come up:
- I'm aware this is in the "are you insane?" realm of design
- I'm aware this will summon the lag monster, even welded, and probably the kraken when placed in orbit. 
- I'm trying to keep it stock.

 

 

 

[MoonMan22]

Sounds fun!

 

This might help with that issue:

Or this

 

goodluck!

Edited February 6, 2016 by MoonMan22

[Geschosskopf]

To clarify a bit on what @MoonMan22 said, I'll explain why those mods might help, although I would not expect wonders from there in your case.

Active Texture Management (ATM):  KSP supports part textures in many file formats, some of which are more efficient than others in terms of memory consumption.  ATM works on the less-efficient ones.  It used to make quite a difference but over the last few updates, Squad has changed pretty much all stock textures to DDS, and most modders have followed suit.  ATM doesn't do anything for DDS textures so these days it really doesn't make much difference.

Texture Replacer (TR):  The main thing here is that it supports dynamic texture loading.  Instead of having all textures in memory all the time, supposedly now TR loads and unloads them on demand depending on what parts are in view.  It's thus a big help if the number of textures needed at any one time is significantly less than the total number in the game, like with ships only having a small number of different parts.  But it doesn't really help with monstrous ships that have nearly every part in the game already installed on them.

So really, the only way to reduce part-count lag is to reduce part-count.  If you can't do that, then you have to live with the problem.  Or wait until the game goes 64-bit, which hopefully will reduce the severity of this problem.

[numerobis]

Removing MechJeb will speed up the editor while you modify the ship: when MechJeb is present, every frame, it computes stuff about the ship -- that slows things down. Other info mods likely do the same.

It wouldn't make a big difference just in *loading* the ship though.

Edited February 7, 2016 by numerobis