# A speed-up trick for dot performance testing

**URL:** <https://forum.graphviz.org/t/a-speed-up-trick-for-dot-performance-testing/3298>\
**Category:** Dev\
**Created:** [February 10, 2026, 5:18am UTC](https://forum.graphviz.org/t/a-speed-up-trick-for-dot-performance-testing/3298 "2026-02-10T05:18:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![steveroush](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9adbd/32.png) [@steveroush](https://forum.graphviz.org/u/steveroush)\
**Post date:** [February 10, 2026, 5:18am UTC](https://forum.graphviz.org/t/a-speed-up-trick-for-dot-performance-testing/3298/1 "2026-02-10T05:18:25Z")

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If you are

- testing dot with large, slow input files
- using some combination of **nslimit**  **mclimit**  **remincross**  **searchsize** to speed up the test and make it tolerable (e.g. dot 2854\_0.gv -Tsvg -v -Gnslimit=2 -Gmclimit=.22 -Gremincross=false -Gsearchsize=20 -o2854\_0.true.svg)

try setting **splines=false**

your job will probably run faster and maybe much faster.

Why? **dot** can sometimes thrash about while trying to draw splines if the previous phases are tightly limited