Monitoring Windows System Resource Usage

A Windows system resource monitor has been implemented within Altium Designer. When resource consumption gets to a level considered to be high, a resource warning flag appears at the bottom-right of Altium Designer. Hover the cursor over the flag for information about the current resource consumption. Note that the color of the warning flag changes to highlight the level of resource consumption, and the message indicates when a restart is advisable.

A warning flag appears when Altium Designer's resource consumption becomes high, and changes color to indicate when action is required.A warning flag appears when Altium Designer's resource consumption becomes high, and changes color to indicate when action is required.

The following resources are monitored:

  • Memory used by Altium Designer
  • Count of allocated GDI handles
  • Percentage of allocated global and session atoms

The resource monitor triggers and displays a warning flag when any of the above resources reach the following levels:

  • < 60% normal level (no resource flag is displayed)
  • 61% to 75% is considered a high level, indicated by a yellow flag
  • 76% to 90% is considered a very high level, indicated by an orange flag
  • > 90% is considered a critical level, indicated by a red flag
It is important to be aware that Windows has a default limit of 10000 GDI handles available per application, it is strongly recommended that you restart Altium Designer when advised to do so.

 

Note

This documentation page contains information for an older version of Altium Designer. The latest, online documentation can be found here.