UIView Awful Performance - ios

Question

I have built a slide navigation controller which allows the sliding of UIViewController's in a fast and smooth way (Facebook style). I have since added a UIViewController with a child view controller with it's own child view controller, as well as a table view. The lowest child view controller also has a view subviews. This UIViewController has the view that is made visible when the top view is slid away.
I have tested the smoothness both with and without this view controller. Without it the slide runs at a nice 60 frames per second, but with it my device is only managing a choppy 20 to 30 fps.
I have also tried removing subviews which seems to make a slight improvement, but not as much as I would expect. Even when switched out with another fairly complex view controller (without child view controls though) I get much better performance.
I am using auto layout throughout the app, and have come to believe this is the problem. None of my code is being executed whilst this poor sliding is occurring, so I believe it has something to do with the constraints being calculated as more of the view is being shown, but can't be sure.
As to avoid including the whole class, here are the updateViewConstraint methods in the view controller and subviews:
TOP VIEW CONTROLLER
/**
* Called when the view controller’s view needs to update its constraints.
*/
- (void)updateViewConstraints
{
[super updateViewConstraints];
// remove all constraints
[self.view removeConstraints:self.view.constraints];
NSArray *constraints;
// add the table view to the top of the view and the parameters view to the bottom
constraints = [NSLayoutConstraint constraintsWithVisualFormat:#"H:|-(Panel)-[tableView]|"
options:kNilOptions
metrics:#{#"Panel": #(kPanelWidth)}
views:self.viewsDictionary];
[self.view addConstraints:constraints];
constraints = [NSLayoutConstraint constraintsWithVisualFormat:#"V:|[tableView]-|"
options:kNilOptions
metrics:nil
views:self.viewsDictionary];
[self.view addConstraints:constraints];
constraints = [NSLayoutConstraint constraintsWithVisualFormat:#"H:|-(PanelPlus)-[recipeParameters]-|"
options:kNilOptions
metrics:#{#"PanelPlus": #(kPanelWidth + 20)}
views:self.viewsDictionary];
[self.view addConstraints:constraints];
constraints = [NSLayoutConstraint constraintsWithVisualFormat:#"V:[recipeParameters(==Height)]|"
options:kNilOptions
metrics:#{ #"Height" : #(kParametersControllerHeight)}
views:self.viewsDictionary];
[self.view addConstraints:constraints];
}
FIRST CHILD VIEW CONTROLLER
/**
* Called when the view controller’s view needs to update its constraints.
*/
- (void)updateViewConstraints
{
[super updateViewConstraints];
// remove all constraints
[self.view removeConstraints:self.view.constraints];
NSArray *constraints = [NSLayoutConstraint constraintsWithVisualFormat:#"V:|[pageView]|" options:kNilOptions
metrics:nil views:self.viewsDictionary];
[self.view addConstraints:constraints];
constraints = [NSLayoutConstraint constraintsWithVisualFormat:#"H:|[pageView]|" options:kNilOptions
metrics:nil views:self.viewsDictionary];
[self.view addConstraints:constraints];
}
SECOND CHILD VIEW CONTROLLER
- (void)updateViewConstraints
{
[super updateViewConstraints];
NSArray *constraints;
// remove all constraints
[self.view removeConstraints:self.view.constraints];
if (self.interfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait || self.interfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortraitUpsideDown)
{
constraints = [NSLayoutConstraint constraintsWithVisualFormat:#"V:|-(8)-[optionLabel]-[selectionWheel]-[includeExclude(==32)]-|"
options:NSLayoutFormatAlignAllCenterX
metrics:nil
views:self.viewsDictionary];
[self.view addConstraints:constraints];
constraints = [NSLayoutConstraint constraintsWithVisualFormat:#"H:|-[selectionWheel]-|"
options:kNilOptions
metrics:nil
views:self.viewsDictionary];
[self.view addConstraints:constraints];
constraints = [NSLayoutConstraint constraintsWithVisualFormat:#"H:|-[includeExclude]-|"
options:kNilOptions
metrics:nil
views:self.viewsDictionary];
[self.view addConstraints:constraints];
}
else
{
constraints = [NSLayoutConstraint constraintsWithVisualFormat:#"V:|-[selectionWheel]-|" options:kNilOptions
metrics:nil views:self.viewsDictionary];
[self.view addConstraints:constraints];
constraints = [NSLayoutConstraint constraintsWithVisualFormat:#"H:|-[optionLabel]-[selectionWheel]-(Balance)-|"
options:NSLayoutFormatAlignAllCenterY
metrics:#{#"Balance": #(self.optionLabel.bounds.size.width + 40)}
views:self.viewsDictionary];
[self.view addConstraints:constraints];
}
}
CUSTOM UICONTROL (SUBVIEW OF SECOND CHILD VIEW CONTROLLER)
/**
* Update constraints for the view.
*/
- (void)updateConstraints
{
[super updateConstraints];
[self removeConstraints:self.constraints];
[self.excludeButton removeConstraints:self.excludeButton.constraints];
[self.includeButton removeConstraints:self.includeButton.constraints];
NSArray *constraints;
NSLayoutConstraint *constraint;
// add everything to fill the bounds
constraints = [NSLayoutConstraint constraintsWithVisualFormat:#"V:|-(==6)-[excludeButton]-(==6)-|"
options:kNilOptions
metrics:nil
views:self.viewsDictionary];
[self addConstraints:constraints];
constraints = [NSLayoutConstraint constraintsWithVisualFormat:#"H:|[excludeButton][optionLabel][includeButton]|"
options:NSLayoutFormatAlignAllTop | NSLayoutFormatAlignAllBottom
metrics:nil
views:self.viewsDictionary];
[self addConstraints:constraints];
// make the exclude and include buttons square
constraint = [NSLayoutConstraint constraintWithItem:self.excludeButton attribute:NSLayoutAttributeWidth relatedBy:NSLayoutRelationEqual toItem:self.excludeButton attribute:NSLayoutAttributeHeight multiplier:1.0f constant:0.0f];
[self.excludeButton addConstraint:constraint];
constraint = [NSLayoutConstraint constraintWithItem:self.includeButton attribute:NSLayoutAttributeWidth relatedBy:NSLayoutRelationEqual toItem:self.includeButton attribute:NSLayoutAttributeHeight multiplier:1.0f constant:0.0f];
[self.includeButton addConstraint:constraint];
}
The implementation of the top UIViewController is here.