SOLIDWORKS low resources - What's holding my RAM hostage?

Not this ram!!

This RAM!!

Ever wonder why you don't have that many things open but you still get an out of resources warning? Maybe you are savvy enough to check your Task Manager and look at the processes.

Sorting by largest use still doesn't explain it.

Let's look at the Resources…

So we have 16GB installed, 5GB in use + 8.6 free = 13.6… hey what is this… government math? The available states 11.2GB where is this other RAM going?

Let's open the Resource Monitor that will tell us!

It appears we have found the leak. It's Standby memory. What is this you ask? Well it's the memory of recently opened files and programs that Windows has chosen to remember for you, in case you decided to go back and re-use it, if so nice and quick. In this example I am in by no means running out of resources. What if I were? I have seen some of these hogging upwards of 12GB!!

How do we clean that out? Apparently SOLIDWORKS resources aren't important enough for Windows to dump this memory so we can avoid getting the warning message when we are all full. Enter RAMMAP.exe. This little free program can help you tidy up without having to lose your work or close SOLIDWORKS.

Here is a screen shot from inside the program. It basically shows the same stuff you can see with the Resource Monitor.

Under the processes tab we can see what is using the standby RAM.

And now for my favorite part, see the EMPTY menu at the top? Be a little careful in here; make sure you are only dumping the Standby memory.

Close the program and return to the system resources. As best stated by Bullwinkle J. Moose… Nothing up my sleeve… Presto! (Except this time it worked!)

Click here to download RAMMAP:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff700229.aspx

John Van Engen
CATI Tech Support
Computer Aided Technology, Inc.