Hiding elements selectively or replacing them with empty boxes

Question

Is there any package or environment that allows to substitute whatever you want in your output with empty boxes of the same size, like you do with documentclass' or some packages' draft option for images and some other things?

One approach is to write inside \textcolor{white}{} but that only works "visually" and if you don't need to include commands as \section{} inside.

If there is no built solution yet, maybe using ifdraft package?

The idea is to hide parts selectively while keeping the appearance of the layout, and... maybe saving some time when compiling very large documents? The \input{} solution, for example, is not a solution: if you want to print only the middle paragraph in p3 it would appear in fist page's top.

It is hard to do this and allow line/page breaking and any possible approach I can think of would take longer rather than less time as it would involve measuring and potentially multiple runs to figure out where the text would have gone. — David Carlisle, Jan 20 '14 at 11:26
So not less run time. But maybe something to at least just superimpose a white box over the elements? — Andrestand, Jan 20 '14 at 11:28
If Bruno's answer in your 2nd link doesn't answer this you'll need to give more detail ("Just" isn't the word I'd use, it is very hard to do this in TeX:-) — David Carlisle, Jan 20 '14 at 11:57
Instead of \textcolor{white}{}, you could just use \color{white}. This approach will work across section boundaries. To undo it, just enter \color{black}. Of course, no compilation time is saved here. — Steven B. Segletes, Feb 14 '14 at 03:29

Hiding elements selectively or replacing them with empty boxes

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