One extrude cutting many circles from one sketch still cut the plate once per circle, each boolean rebuilding and re-meshing a plate grown by every hole before it (32 circles 2 s, 128 circles 60 s). The #261 fix joined clear tools with kernel::union_apart only in pattern replay; apply_traced now does it for every cut with 8 or more tools (patterns included), keeping each piece's face lineage.