Advanced on Layer5 Documentation

Performance Limits and Tuning

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Kanvas is designed to handle a wide range of infrastructure and application configurations. However, there are some performance limits that you should be aware of when working with Kanvas. This guide will help you understand these limits and provide tips for tuning your environment for optimal performance.

Performance Limits 🔗

Maximum Number of Components 🔗

Kanvas has a maximum limit of 1,000 components per design. If you exceed this limit, you may experience performance issues such as slow loading times and laggy interactions. To avoid hitting this limit, consider breaking your design into smaller, more manageable designs.

Design Render Quality

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

By default, Kanvas optimizes the rendering of your designs to ensure good performance and responsiveness. This means that some computationally intensive visual elements, such as advanced relationships like TagSets (groups of components visually demarcated), might not be displayed initially to reduce system load.

To learn more about defining relationships between components, including the detailed use and creation of TagSets, please see the Creating Relationships | Layer5 Documentation.

Enable Full Render Mode 🔗

To activate this full render mode, you will need to add the render=full parameter to your Kanvas design URL. This mode ensures all elements, including TagSets, are displayed, which might otherwise be hidden for performance optimization.

Auto-pan on Drag

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Auto-pan on Drag (autopan, for short) is the behavior where Kanvas scrolls the canvas for you when you drag a component close to — or past — the visible edge. Instead of having to stop, let go, scroll the canvas, grab the component again, and continue, you keep dragging and the canvas glides along with you.

Autopan is the difference between “move this component to another part of the design” being one continuous gesture vs. four separate ones. It is on by default in the Designer, and you can turn it off any time in the Options panel.

Render Modes

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Kanvas can draw the same design at four different levels of visual fidelity. The level is called the render mode, and it controls how much of Kanvas’s visual machinery — badges, overlays, textures, grid, relationship animations — actually runs on each frame. Lower-fidelity modes paint less, so they stay fast on larger designs. Higher-fidelity modes show everything, which is what you want on a design you’re polishing or presenting.

The render mode is a performance tool, not a document property. Switching modes does not change your design — components, relationships, layers, and metadata are identical. It only changes what Kanvas chooses to render on screen.