Blog SOLIDWORKS Keeps Crashing - GDI
Many of us have gone through some instances where SOLIDWORKS crashes during certain operations or even at random. One particular issue that keeps repeating is when SOLIDWORKS crashes while rotating your model during an Extend Surface operation. This can be true when you have an edge selected so that the propagate icon shows during the preview.
What actually happens is, on complex models, the GDI count can climb rapidly to 10,000 during this operation. You can view this performance with the Task Manager. You may have to select the column to display that first by clicking the "View" pull-down menu within the Task Manager.
One of the most common graphics-related problems we see is a "GDI leak", which will eventually cause rendering problems or errors. They can also cause performance problems as well. GDI Objects are stored in Kernel Memory (specifically the Paged Pool or Session Pool portions of kernel memory).
Raising this limit in SOLIDWORKS does not raise the available kernel memory to store the actual GDI objects that the handles identify. It also REDUCES the number of GDI objects that the rest of the system (including Windows itself) can use.
The short-term solution is recorded under S-071391 which provides a Hotfix #944803 for current users to install onto their machines. This will be implemented into SOLIDWORKS 2016 SP4 as the long-term solution.
PLEASE NOTE: You would have to uninstall this hotfix before upgrading to SOLIDWORKS 2016 SP4.
George Brañes
Technical Support Engineer
CATI