Hello,
You should avoid “Find all references” this VS feature is broken, it’s slow and never release ressources, also you can’t stop a search, the stop button doesn’t work.
Instead you may use “Find and replace” tab, to search you can use regex/exact match you should also exclude some file extension/folders.
Example you can set File types to:
“!.ini;!.cs;!.natvis;!/Shaders/;!/Intermediate/;!/Engine/Source/ThirdParty/*”
means do not search files of type config, build/target. and do not search in, Shaders/intermediate/Thirdparty. You can also regroup the matching result by path and file to see where your query match.
About IPCH / VS database, I’ve not tested the MS recommendation:
“Always use fallback location” but did you tried to set the “Fallback Location” and set to a folder you create in project paths e.g “…/Unreal Projects/VSDB” All your projects would search this path, this could have side effect with different engine version etc.
Instead to prevent the .VS folder creation:
Tools->Options->Text Editor->C / C+±>Advanced->Intellisense->Disable automatic precompiled header : true
With this settings intellisense is “slower” when you reoppen a file after closing vs.
In reality this is quite fast and it prevent project size ballooning.
I think this should be a recommended setting in epic visual studio setup documentation.