I've had inquiries as to: what does a 'bad allocation' error report mean?

A 'bad allocation' error is usually caused by Caedium running out of memory. Caedium is currently a 32 bit application which means it can access approximately 2 GB of RAM. As you approach this limit it is likely to trigger this error and any subsequent operations will fail or behave erratically.

The most likely scenario for exhausting the available memory is through either importing a large number of geometry components (in the order of 1000s) or specifying a very fine mesh using the Accuracy tool.

Also performing numerous geometry Boolean (e.g., unite) operations on complex geometry can quickly use up memory, due to keeping many large undo states. To alleviate this problem try reducing the Undo Levels property found in File->Preferences.