54.6.1 Where are plug-in files stored?

When you start ABAQUS/CAE, it searches for plug-in files in the following directories and all their subdirectories:

abaqus_dir\abaqus_plugins, where abaqus_dir is the ABAQUS parent directory.
home_dir\abaqus_plugins, where home_dir is your home directory.
current_dir\abaqus_plugins, where current_dir is the current directory.
plugin_dir, where plugin_dir is a directory specified in the abaqus_v6.env file by the environment variable plugin_central_dir. You can store plug-ins in a central location that can be accessed by all users at your site if the directory to which plugin_central_dir refers is mounted on a file system that all users can access. For example,
```
plugin_central_dir = r'\\fileServer\sharedDirectory'
```
For more information, see “Using the ABAQUS environment file,” Section 4.1 of the ABAQUS Installation and Licensing Guide.

ABAQUS/CAE will import any files in these directories that match the naming convention *_plugin.py. These files must contain registration commands. The name of the file must follow the rules described in “Standard ABAQUS Scripting Interface exceptions,” Section 5.5.2 of the ABAQUS Scripting User's Manual.