What You Should Know Before You Start

A default material library file is provided with the Real Time Rendering products. By default, this file is located:

• under Windows: $CATStartupPath\startup\materials\Catalog.CATMaterial
• under UNIX: $CATStartupPath/startup/materials/Catalog.CATMaterial

Note: For languages other than English, a folder identified by the appropriate language contains the Catalog.CATMaterial.

Would you need to open a specific library, you can do so interactively using the Library dialog box. See Applying a Material.

The environment variable CATStartupPath concatenates start-up directories. When applying a material, the library is looked for according to the user-defined path, and if no specific path has been indicated, the first occurrence of the Catalog.CATMaterial found in the directories listed in the variable is loaded.

As of V5R26, CATIA no longer supports .fx format files creation. However, materials created using .fx files created prior to V5R26 level can be visualized and edited in .fx format if needed.