Installed 2009 SP2 this morning and am now getting a message popping up that “you are running low on desktop application resources. Close some other aplications or close some solidworks drawings” Have never had this before. Any sugestions? 32 bit Dual 3Ghz HP 4GB Ram.
damnsolid 9:44 pm on January 14, 2009 Permalink
One area worth investigating is desktop heap. If Desktop heap becomes exhausted, then the warnings will be generated when SolidWorks requests a new object to be displayed in the User Interface and there is not enough resources to display the object.
It is possible to increase the desktop heap size to allow for more desktop resources to be allocated. It is important that you understand what portion of desktop resources are being depleted as arbitrarily changing values in the registry may have negative consequences and may not even address the root cause.
Another area worth investigating is the use of 3GB switch. This has the ability to limit the use of desktop resources as you are effectively removing 1 GB of memory away from the system (kernel space). Desktop heap and other desktop resources are allocated from this area of Windows. To give you an idea, running with /3GB enabled will restrict the session view space from 48 MB to 20 MB because of constraints placed on the system. Desktop heap is allocated from within the session view space. Session view space is a memory buffer set aside in the kernel space to accomodate resources such as desktop heap and GDI. The 3GB switch could create conditions where session view space becomes exhausted and this could create negative side effects that you would not normally see without the 3GB switch. If these errors are common, a recommendation would be to consider running without the /3GB switch to see if this decreases the persistent desktop resource warnings. If running without the /3GB switch is not an option, then consider running fewer applications. If the persistent desktop resource warnings are replaced with “out of memory” errors, consideration for an x64 solution may be necessary as you would most likely be approaching the architectural limits with x32 computing.
Review http://blogs.msdn.com/ntdebugging/archive/2007/01/04/desktop-heap-overview.aspx for more information on desktop heap and how to monitor usage to help determine if these warnings are the result of desktop heap exhaustion.
Keep in mind that changing the interactive heap has the potential to decrease performance. Please see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/126962/
bagsas 12:12 am on January 15, 2009 Permalink
Thanks for that info, I am using the 3GB switch and my default session view size was set to 48.
Will have a play and see what I come up with.
CBL 5:47 am on January 15, 2009 Permalink
Good info, damnsolid.
In conjunction with the /3GB switch, the /userva=2900 switch can be used. This reduces the actual amount taken by the /3GB (3096MB) switch to 2900MB which is often enough to keep things running smoothly.
sldprt 9:03 pm on January 15, 2009 Permalink
Quote:/
Good info, damnsolid.
In conjunction with the /3GB switch, the /userva=2900 switch can be used. This reduces the actual amount taken by the /3GB (3096MB) switch to 2900MB which is often enough to keep things running smoothly.
Quote:\
I was going to say that! Play with it a bit through boot ups. If you want peek performance.
bagsas 4:19 pm on January 19, 2009 Permalink
Thanks for the info and will look into it.