Fast redraw moving forms in animation

[Xster]

Hi,

I have a desktop form with multiple mdi child forms inside each with about 5 controls and a datagridview. I created a function where it would rearrange the mdi child forms in a neat way but I wanted it to be animated as well. I did it the simple way, ie just move all the form in small steps, but was as expected very slow and its speed is O(number of forms) which is embarrassing to look at since one child form is fast and 10 child form is crawling.

Is there a way to move a form on the screen without redrawing every single controls in it? Preferably with speeds beyond visible threashhold and not noticable a speed as a function of number of forms displayed.

I'm not too much of a pro in vb yet but a couple of keywords I can google can help a lot

 

[Xster]

help anyone?

is there a way to say transform the drawn form into a bitmap with 80% opacity and move the bitmap around without adding extra controls?

another question, sometimes I have to make all forms hide and show, but on show, the forms get drawn one by one even when I do it all at the same time and doesn't look neat. Is there a way to delay draw event so everything happens at the same time? like Applications.DoEvents(), is there an inverse of that and nothing happens on the forms until Applications.DoEvents() is called?