[Qgis-user] Openlayer plugin performance ideas?

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Hi all,

I have a project in which I basically have two large base maps -- an openlayers
plugin map from google (hybrid), and a postgis vector layer with all the census
blocks for the entire state of Oregon.  I zoom in and out of the map looking at
various attributes in the block to see if they match buildings shown in the
areal image (specifically, whether large group quarters numbers in the block
correspond to large buildings in the block as well).

Often I will query the block layer to constrain it to a given city and with
blocks that have a certain attribute ("cityname10='Newport' and gq10>=10"), and
zoom to those blocks using the attribute table.  Sometimes I just do a
constraint like gq>=100 and look at the whole state.

The block layer only renders when the scale is 25000:1 or less.

This works fine as it is, but it can be a little bit pokey when the openlayers
image is open. If I turn off the image, it is darn fast.  I would like to try
scale dependent rendering, but I can't get a properties dialogue.

Does anybody have any ideas on how to speed this up, and still do it on a
statewide scale (ie I don't want to download a bazillion image files, if I can
avoid it)?

It works pretty well as it is, I just want it faster. ;)