1 – Working environment

The working environment in CATIA is managed by the files called CATSETTINGS. It is in these files that the options you have chosen in the CATIA option editor are saved, as well as the customisation of your toolbars, custom colours, etc. …. These files exist in the default CATIA directory, but you have the possibility of creating a directory to save your custom CATSETTINGS so as not to modify the original ones.

2 – Creating a new environment

To create a new environment for CATIA, you do not need to be an administrator, if you are not an administrator, you just need to create a directory other than the one configured by default when CATIA was installed.
In principle the default directory is in C:\ProgramData\DassaultSystemes<user>.

Once this directory has been created, we will search in Windows for the CATIA tools, then we select Environment Editor

Select: Options / User Storage Directory :

I select a directory:

Once done, a new environment is created:

A name is given to this new environment:

1 – Replace the existing environment: if an environment has the same name the old environment will be overwritten.
2 – Create an icon on the desktop: not necessarily useful, unless you have not checked option 3.
3 – To create a shortcut in the Start menu: with the choice, not necessarily useful, except if you did not not notch the option 2.
One validates.
The environment has just been created, we can see in the directory the new environment file :

We will now have to configure the new environment so that CATIA will write the CATSettings in this directory (CATSettings are CATIA’s configuration files), we select the environment, then the CATUserSettingPath variable:

Right click on the variable, then Edit :OK.

In the Value box, enter the path of the new environment:

We leave the environment editor :

The message below will appear, confirm with YES :

The new environment is minimally configured, CATIA is opened from the startup icon, CATIA may ask you to select a license:

You validate, the license manager will open, you select a license, CATIA will ask you to restart the session:

We validate and restart, we can see that in the directory of the new environment, CATIA has written files, these are the configuration files of the new environment, these files are the CATSettings :