why cleantogrid filter so slow?

I have an octree mesh flow solution which comes from my solver ufocfd (octree)

I decided to use use “clean to grid” because it seems the only way to get gradients of density.

I noticed that the cleantogrid filter is very slow (mesh is 10million cells) and gets worse for later versions of paraview. I am using v3.98 its slow, then v5.10 is slower, and v6.0 grinds to a halt.

v6.0.1 literally stops at 3%

What is going on? Is there a better way to get density gradient, instead of clean to grid?

thanks. Giles