warned by SolidWorks that their system resources are running low

Once any single process hits 10,000 GDI Objects, it’s terminated. This is the default limit defined by Windows that a single process can reach.
There’s a registry tweak that can change this; a single process can max out at 16,384, while the system wide max for all processes is 65,536; edit the
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\GDIProcessHandleQuota
registry key to change the per-process limit (GDIProcessHandleQuota) to the upper limit of 16,384; set the BASE to DECIMAL.  This will buy you some breathing room.
** WARNING! – I recommend only making this change if you are very comfortable editing the Windows Registry.  Accidental changes to the registry can render your system inoperable, so exercise extreme caution when making any registry edits.  I strongly recommend creating a Windows Restore Point prior to performing any registry edits.


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If it’s still crashing out at only 10,996 GDIs, then the crash isn’t likely due to the GDI objects ceiling being hit since you’ve just finished raising it to 16,384. You’re likely crashing out due to the Windows heap stack running out of resources. Unfortunately there’s no easy fix for that limitation until Windows 8 perhaps…