How to make TikZ faster?

Question

I have a long document containing plenty of TikZ figures and it is painfully slow to compile it.

Is there any specific TikZ tips / good practices you could recommend me so that I can write figures that does not take too much time to be compiled?

I am aware of the TikZ external library but it triggers dependency/recompilation problems that are difficult (IMHO) to solve. Also, the bigger the document is, the easier it is to overlook that one figure did not get recompiled as expected.

Is there, for instance, parts of the TikZ API which are notoriously slow?

Answer 1

I share similar feelings with the OP, and find the externalization solution good, but for sure not perfect. For example, in addition to the con the the OP pointed, I would like to add two issues:

1. If one inserts a new figure, somewhere in the middle of the document, then tikz will re-build all the following ones, although they were not changed.
2. Editing the image is somehow annoying. You don't want to edit your tikz image as part of a huge document.

I'm not familiar enough with the standalone package, so I cannot really judge, but if I understand correctly, it won't avoid compiling all the image when the main document is compiled.

Following is an outline of an idea that I tried to implement. So far it is not working, but it might be an idea for others...

Setting

Assume the you have the following structure:

- project
|- main.tex
|- tikz-images
   |- tikz1.tex
   |- tikz2.tex

and you build using latexmk.

Idea

Turn the tikz images into standalone documents, build their corresponding pdf's using make and include the pdf(!) in the document. This way, whenever a new tikz image is created, all you need to do is add a target to the makefile in tikz-images.

Problems will come regarding the compilation using latexmk who will not(!) be aware of changes to tikz1.tex.

Implementation

First, the files in tikz-images should have the extension .tikz, reserving the .tex extension for a common preamble to be included in all figure source codes. This will help you to keep the same font & Co. settings of the main document. Then, in project create the following makefile:

TIKZDIR = tikz-figures
TIKZ_FILES = $(wildcard $(TIKZDIR)/*.tikz)
PDFTIKZ_FILES = $(patsubst %.tikz,%.pdf,$(TIKZ_FILES))

$(TIKZDIR)/%.pdf: $(TIKZDIR)/%.tikz $(TIKZDIR)/common-preamble.tex
    cd $(TIKZDIR); \
    pdflatex $$(basename $<)

.PHONY : FORCE_MAKE
all : main.pdf
main.pdf : main.tex FORCE_MAKE ${PDFTIKZ_FILES}
    latexmk main.tex

This way, calling make main.pdf in project will first build the tikz images (incase they were changed, or they are missing) and then latexmk will take care of the rest.

This approach, once fully implemented, could have two main advantages:

1. Developing the pictures can be quicker and be carried out regardless of the main document. Thus, faster.
2. Building of the document can be quicker as well since it will merely include ready PDFs.

Problems:

1. As I mentioned, completing the implementation of the makefile in `project.
2. One of the most important benefits of externalization library of tikz is that you get the same setting for the images (fonts for example). To have this also in the proposed approach, something has to be done.
3. Improve the makefile of the tikz images.

Answer 2

On this page you can find a suitable solution which uses externalization of images as mentioned in one of the comments above and describes the advantages of this approach like faster compilation as well as easier reuse and version control.

Answer 3

I just have two documents open. I look if the tikzpicture is ok on an seperate document, once it is ok, I use it in the final document.