Tom A. <tar### [at] my-dejacom> wrote:
> General question - is difference an expensive operation?

  It depends. Difference between some objects is usually efficient. The
worst case is, I think, when you have a really complex object (which takes
some time to render) and you cut many small parts out of it by differencing
it with lots of objects. AFAIK this is a sitation where the difference CSG
routine cannot perform too well.

  See also:
http://www.students.tut.fi/~warp/povQandT/miscQandT.html#csgspeed

>  I'm very
> comfortable with difference, but there are often other ways to create
> things - should I avoid it for performance reasons (if performance is
> important)?

  If you are getting really slow render times, then you can think about
alternative ways.
  If the rendering times are ok, then why bother? :)

-- 
#macro M(A,N,D,L)plane{-z,-9pigment{mandel L*9translate N color_map{[0rgb x]
[1rgb 9]}scale<D,D*3D>*1e3}rotate y*A*8}#end M(-3<1.206434.28623>70,7)M(
-1<.7438.1795>1,20)M(1<.77595.13699>30,20)M(3<.75923.07145>80,99)// - Warp -

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