SOLIDWORKS Resource Monitor Warning

You have received this warning: ‘Available open document capacity is low’, ‘Available open document capacity is critically low’, and ‘WARNING! SOLIDWORKS is running critically’? Do not stress there is nothing generally wrong with system memory, it’s most likely due to the Graphic Device Interface (GDI) objects approaching the default pre-defined limit by Windows.

Windows GDI is an Application Programming Interface (API) used for representing graphical objects and displaying them on your external displays within the Windows Operating System (OS). The Windows OS limits the maximum number of GDI objects available for each process. Each OS allows 10,000 GDI objects for each process. Once any process nears the 10,000 GDI Object limit, the process can become unstable and you may not be able to interact with the user interface.

SOLIDWORKS monitors the GDI object usage for the SOLIDWORKS process and displays a series of warnings starting at 85% of the GDI object per process limit. When you see these warnings there are recommendations you may follow to manage the situation.

The first suggestion is to upgrade the custom size in the Virtual Memory instead of modifying the registry settings. If this resolved, no modification of the registry settings is required. In the event, that this does not resolve, then you will need to modify the registry settings.

So as the first step:

1. Go to Control Panel> System > Advanced System Settings

2. Advanced (Tab) > Settings

3. Advanced > Change

4. Uncheck “Automatically manage paging file size for all drives”.Choose the Driver which you would prefer to utilise the virtual memory.

5. Under Custom size, enter the value double the size of the amount of physical RAM installed in your PC. (If you have 32GB, type in 64000MB)

6. Enter the Initial size value of 2 times the amount of physical RAM installed in your system (eg. If you have 32GB, type in 64000MB.)

7. Click on ‘Set’.

8. Restart your workstation.

If the issue persists, as the second step we can monitor the GDI objects:

1- Open Task Manager (right click on start bar > Task Manager OR through CTRL+ALT+DEL)

2- Click on ‘Details’ Tab

3- Right-click on one of the columns and click  ‘Select Columns’

4- Tick the GDI objects

Then you can perform the below changes:

1- Open Regedit (via Run > type ‘regedit’)

2- Locate to the key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE> SOFTWARE> Microsoft> Windows NT> CurrentVersion> Windows>  GDIProcessHandleQuota

3- Right click on the ‘GDIProcessHandleQuota’ and click ‘Modify’.

4- Change the registry key to the maximum process limit 16,384; set the BASE to DECIMAL.

For information about the registry key responsible for the GDI object per process setting, see the Microsoft article .

CAUTION: Incorrectly editing the registry can severely damage your operating system. The SOLIDWORKS Technical Support team strongly suggests that you back up the registry data before making any changes to the registry.

Parisa Amiri,

Application Engineer,

Central Innovation, Australia

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