Is there a limit to shapes or conditional formatting rules on a diagram in Lucidchart?

Hi ​@MarkTerrington 

Lucidchart does not enforce a strict maximum on the number of shapes or overall file size, and there is no actual numeric limit on conditional formatting rules.

In general, very large document and especially diagrams with a high number of conditional formatting rules can experience significant performance degradation during rendering and interaction, even on capable machines and supported browsers.

In this case, the unusually high number of conditional formatting rules applied within a single diagram is very likely the primary contributor to the slowness. The recommended approach is to reduce or consolidate rules, limit their scope where possible, and/or split the diagram into smaller, more focused diagrams.

Hope this helps - Happy to help further!!
Thank you very much and have a great one!
Warm regards

Thanks for your help and reply, I certainly appreciate it.

The diagram in question is a software landscape.  Not sure how I can consolidate rules as I am using them for the “hover text” and having a caption showing a description of each application or interface between applications.  Same with splitting the diagram as it is a “landscape” of everything.  is there an alternative way to enable “hover text”?

Lucid did advise me to use an incognito browser which has helped but I think users of the diagram may also have the same issue so it’s not something we could recommend for all business users.

Thanks again.

Hi ​@MarkTerrington, 

Thank you for posting in the Lucid Community! It looks like you have also submitted a support ticket with us. We can continue to troubleshoot this issue through that support ticket. 

Thank you ​@Humas1985 for those suggestions on reducing the size of the document to increase performance. Here are some additional tips when experiencing slowness: 

• Try opening your document in a Chrome Incognito browsing session. This often improves performance by clearing your cache and cookies and disabling your extensions.
• Try connecting to a different network or disconnecting from your VPN (if applicable) to rule out any connection or security issues?
• Make a duplicate of the document to remove any revision history and background data. 

Hope this helps! 

Hi ​@Michelle S 

Thanks for the feedback.  Yes I did get a response from support which recommended the incognito browser.  This helped for a little while but now I am back to the same issue of the diagram ‘freezing’ and having several “wait or quit” responses after clicking on a shape or moving the diagram.  But this isn’t just about me as it will be about other employees using the diagram as a source of truth or reference.  I can’t ask everyone to use an incognito browser simply to look at a lucid link.

I cannot switch networks as it is a corporate network.  But the bandwidth is certainly good enough for every employee to be on video meetings so I do not think it is the network.  It certainly seems to be the number of “conditional formatting” rules - I currently have 190. So I am not sure how these have been “coded”.  Shame these can’t been a data link where you’re looking up a table, which I think would use less memory than what is currently happening.

Sadly splitting the document is not an option being that it is a “landscape” - plus I’ve not had such an issue before so it certainly seems to be linked to the rules.  

I’d love to understand the architecture behind the conditional formatting rules.   

190 “if hover over this shape show common overlay with this text variable” can’t be that large, so unsure why there is an issue with conditional formatting.

Thanks again. 

Hi ​@Michelle S ,

I wanted to add that I am now getting issues with the formatting rules that worked previously - in that some of the rules that are meant to trigger when “hovering” over items no longer bring up the Hover Text overlay.  Even though the conditional formatting rule has not been changed.

I’ve looked at the browser console and see a number of errors.:

• https://users.lucid.app/userAvatars/191764851 404 (Not Found)
• https://gravatar.com/avatar/56eff4f52fd34c6c8dbd1d63da07f2d501c8d2703fafe6e14a9eaf440783e80b?cN=32&d=404 404 (Not Found)
• https://lucid.app/users/teamToJoin/chart 404 (Not Found)
• https://data.lucid.app/heartbeat?accessTokens=https%3A%2F%2Fdocuments.lucid.app%2Fdocuments%2F79aa7eb7-4143-4aac-8759-f17f995c1bff 429 (Too Many Requests)
• Ucrm: You've made multiple requests and have hit your rate limit. Try again later.
• https://documents.lucid.app/accounts/113681443/retentionPolicy 404 (Not Found)
• https://documents.lucid.app/documents/79aa7eb7-4143-4aac-8759-f17f995c1bff/attributes/embedded 404 (Not Found)
• https://documents.lucid.app/documents/79aa7eb7-4143-4aac-8759-f17f995c1bff/attributes/embedded 404 (Not Found)
• https://activity.lucid.app/users/191764851/activities/comment/79aa7eb7-4143-4aac-8759-f17f995c1bff/recent 404 (Not Found)
• https://activity.lucid.app/users/191764851/activities/documentShared/79aa7eb7-4143-4aac-8759-f17f995c1bff/recent 404 (Not Found)
• https://activity.lucid.app/users/191764851/activities/comment/79aa7eb7-4143-4aac-8759-f17f995c1bff/recent 404 (Not Found)
• Access to fetch at 'https://users.lucid.app/msteams/191764851/externalUsers' from origin 'https://lucid.app' has been blocked by CORS policy: Response to preflight request doesn't pass access control check: It does not have HTTP ok status.
• 6809c958c2188c92c85e85f821af899c1c985c7c230de877155b1557fa2870.js.br:671 Service Worker failed to fetch https://users.lucid.app/msteams/191764851/externalUsers
• The FetchEvent for "https://users.lucid.app/msteams/191764851/externalUsers" resulted in a network error response: the promise was rejected.
• 6809c958c2188c92c85e85f821af899c1c985c7c230de877155b1557fa2870.js.br:671   Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: Failed to fetch
• cb081e548c941a912e92315c63cd5fefbe686d7f9c5498472faa0e4ea3db1e.js.br:93  GET https://users.lucid.app/msteams/191764851/externalUsers net::ERR_FAILED

I used to develop browser applications and would always make sure I didn’t get any errors in a browser console.  So not sure if these are a factor of the issues I am having or something else.

But currently it seems I have wasted a lot of hours trying to use the conditional formatting rules function only for it to hit a limit and becomes unusable/broken.

Please could you help.

Thanks in advance.

Hi ​@MarkTerrington,

Thanks for the reply! Could you share a temporary Document Support PIN for this document? This will help me take a closer look at what’s going on. This PIN is safe to post in this thread because it is only accessible by members of the Lucid support staff. You can find steps for generating a Support PIN in this Lucid Help Center article: Generate a Lucid Support PIN.

Hi ​@Michelle S ,

As we do not have an NDA with you I’ve had to remove a lot of sensitive info which has taken hours.

The Temporary Support PIN is : du6pDZaSe0a6jJNKejKyTWkOZYHRml0nAd191764851

The more I use the diagram with conditional formatting the more I feel it is a bug.

I used Chrome Incognito browser and would click on a shape with the conditional formatting open.  Each interaction would have a delay of between 1 and 3 seconds.  These would be added together, so after 30 shape interactions the response time from the diagram was over 30 seconds.

I also tried viewing/amending the conditional formatting rules.  Starting from a new incognito browser window the response time started at 2 seconds.  With each subsequent view of a rule this increased between 1 and 3 seconds.   During the session I restarted the browsers 12 times. Each time it went from 2 second response time viewing the conditional formatting rules to 35 seconds response time.  This was consistent over all 12 times. Certainly nothing to do with the browser or the network speed, but very much a product issue.

As you can see from the diagram I do not have much on there - but I have at least another 3 areas to add which will double or triple the amount of shapes and interfaces.  Meaning I will not be able to use the conditional formatting feature as I feel it is not working properly.  The incremental delay suggests a linear accumulation bug and an issue with state management.

I look forward to your help and feel free to email directly.

Thanks again.

Kind regards,

Mark

Hi ​@MarkTerrington, 

Thanks for providing this support PIN! I am unable to reproduce the issue on my end. I’m converting this to a private support ticket so the right team can take a closer look. You should receive an email with further communication.

If you don’t receive an email please feel free to reach out in the thread below.

Hi ​@Michelle S 

Thanks for looking into this but disappointing you cannot recreate. As it is an issue on Chrome and Firefox, and on corporate network or home fibre connection.  My laptop is an i7 with 16Gb of RAM.

So you have no issues looking at the conditional formatting rules and the hover text of each, and have no delay in successive views of rules or the slowing down of diagram response times?  I find that very odd.

What you have asked (screen recording etc.) is a lot of work - can you actually confirm you have no response time issues when hovering over the icons and also interacting with each conditional formatting rule?

Hi ​@MarkTerrington, 

Thanks for your response! Looking at your document, it is in the 96th percentile of all Lucid documents. The large size of your document can cause performance issues. Are you able to break up your document in to smaller documents? 

I am happy to continue troubleshooting this issue, however can you please respond with the information I previously requested so I can take a closer look? 

• A screen-recording of the steps you are taking leading up to the issue.
• A screenshot of the associated Javascript Console output. You can open your Javascript Console by pressing Ctrl + Shift + J (if your computer is a Windows / Linux) OR Cmd + Opt + J (if your computer is a Mac).

Feel free to send this information in this thread or through the private support ticket you have open (if the screenshots have any private information). Thank you! 

Hi ​@Michelle S 

Just referring to my reply from 10 days ago :

“Sadly splitting the document is not an option being that it is a “landscape” of all business applications - plus I’ve not had such an issue before so it certainly seems to be linked to the rules.  “

I’ve also sent a copy the errors from the browser console.  Not sure why you mentioned you could not replicate the problem when I have the same problem in Firefox, Chrome and Chrome Incognito, and via 2 different networks.

Not sure why your last reply was marked as the “best answer” - I’ve removed that as it sadly did not help.

Thank you.

Hi ​@MarkTerrington, 

I apologize for the miscommunication on my end. Another alternative to reducing the size of your document is by making a copy of the document.

If that does not solve the issue, here are some additional troubleshooting steps that can help improve performance:

• You mentioned in one of your first responses that an incognito window helped. This means that this issue is likely caused by cookie or browser extension interference. Can you please try clearing your cache and cookies in a regular browsing session and try again? If the issue persists, I recommend disabling your extensions one by one until you determine which extension is causing the issue.
• Are you connected to a VPN that could be causing this issue? 

I’m happy to take a look at the document again, however it looks like the document support PIN you provided has expired. Could you please generate a new one? Additionally, can you confirm if any of your other teammates are running into this performance issue? 

Morning ​@Michelle S 

Thanks again for your reply.

The analysis I did on the error was only in Chrome Incognito - where the delay response time was incremental.  So I do not think it is any extensions.

I am not connected to a VPN and have used both the corporate network and a Fibre connection from my home.  My reply from 9 days ago that provided the PIN also mentioned the outcome from tests.

I will try and generate another but I have a lot of work to catch up.

Thanks,

Mark

Hello again ​@Michelle S 

I also have an issue of some of the hover text icons will display the text and others will not.  Even though they use the same conditions, e.g., if text contains …

Is there a reason that some of the hover texts will not work?

Thanks again.

Mark

Hi ​@MarkTerrington, 

Thanks for your response! I can take a closer look at the issue with your hover text icons with your document support PIN. Please send that PIN whenever you get the chance. Thank you!