[NEST Users] GetConnections is too slow- can i obtain connection ids as I connect the neurons? (nest v2.20)

Hello, I have a serious bottleneck in terms of runtime in my simulations. I have a modular cortical network and i need to 'manually' change weights in some specific connections before i start the simulation. The modularity means that this happens inside a for loop for all populations pairs. so, before simulation starts i have a function that goes over all population pairs and does this: AMPA_conns = nest.GetConnections(source=pre_pop,target=post_pop, synapse_model='AMPA_synapse_longrange') # RETRIEVE ALL AMPA CONNECTIONS BETWEEN SOURCE AND TARGET POPULATION nest.SetStatus(AMPA_conns, {'weight': pattern_weight}) # CHANGE CONNECTION WEIGHT NMDA_conns = nest.GetConnections(source=pre_pop,target=post_pop, synapse_model='NMDA_synapse_longrange') # RETRIEVE ALL NMDA CONNECTIONS BETWEEN SOURCE AND TARGET POPULATION nest.SetStatus(NMDA_conns, {'weight': pattern_weight * nmda2ampa_ratio}) # CHANGE CONNECTION WEIGHT commenting out these 4 lines reduces my runtime by 8 hours. for reference, the model consists of ~27000neurons, is created in 20 minutes (nodes generated and connections drawn) and the actual simulation runs for about 15 minutes. so my question is: is there a way to obtain the connection ids as i draw the connections (right after the nest.Connect() function) so that i can store them in a data structure and avoid this expensive operation of searching? or perhaps it is the setstatus that makes it expensive? *I havent yet migrated to nest v3, this concerns version 2.20. thank you for your time! angeliki