EnSight Preferences

The first time EnSight is run by an individual user, a private preferences directory is created for that user. A number of different files that control EnSight defaults are stored in the preferences directory and are read as EnSight starts up. Note that in EnSight releases prior to 2025 R1, in a fresh installation of a new release, EnSight always copies the preferences files from its previous release. EnSight no longer does so as of EnSight 2025 R1.

When reading a preference file, EnSight first looks for the file in the user's private preferences directory, and failing that, it looks in the site_preferences directory. The location of the user's private preferences directory is your EnSight defaults directory (located at %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%\(username)\.ensight251). The different preferences, their files and the file formats are documented in Set or Modify Preferences in the Ansys EnSight How-To Manual.

Disabling EnSight Preferences

The command line flag (-no_prefs) can be used to force EnSight to ignore the files in the user's private preferences directory for a single run of EnSight. This can be useful to reset various files to their default values or to clear potentially corrupted caches (see Command Line Start-up Options).