CATIA File Icon and Preview Thumbnail Doesn’t Display

If your CATIA icons have lost their default CATIA icon symbols and a preview thumbnail of the part is not available in Windows Explorer, there is a fix available. While this could be a symptom of having multiple versions of CATIA installed (read our previous post if this is the case) or due to an update of CATIA, if you have one version of CATIA installed it could be due to a system change or file/folder change on windows that has initiated the issue.

This can be resolved by following the process below:

1. In windows select start and search for “cmd”
   
2. In the search list near the top, right click on cmd.exe and open as administrator
3. Minimize the cmd window for now and navigate to the CATIA installation directory (For example, C:\Program Files\Dassault Systemes\B26\win_b64\code\bin). N.B. This may be slightly different depending on the version of CATIA installed and location.
   
4. Once in that folder, right click in the top directory bar of the explorer window (where it shows Computer > Local Disk (C:) > Program Files……etc.) and select “copy address as text
5. Then re-open the CMD window, then type “CD<space>” then right click on the line and select paste. The line should state for example: C:\Users\yourusername> CD C:\Program Files\Dassault Systemes\B26\win_b64\code\bin. Then hit Enter.
   
6. In the CMD window you will now see that the path is pointing to the “bin” folder.
7. In the next line, now type in “CNEXT.exe /unregserver” and press Enter.
8. Then type in the following line “CNEXT.exe /regserver” and press Enter. The last four step should yield a result as follows:
   
9. This will appear to have done nothing but will display the next line. At this stage restart the machine.
10. If you check the CATIA files and the icon still does not appear to be correct, however the preview does appear then right click on the file> select properties> then in the “opens with:” section select the “Change…” button and re-select CATIA as the program> then select ok> then apply/ ok in the file properties window.The problem should be resolved at this point.