Install new kit to Qt Design Studio

DISCLAIMER: The procedure is only to be followed by EXPERT users of Qt Design Studio. Creating a non-standard setup with Qt Design Studio can result in incorrect behavior which is not covered with standard support.

For Qt Design Studio 4.5 build, the compiler version for MSVC is 2019. For later versions (Qt Design Studio 4.6 =>) the compiler is MSVC 2022.

Qt Design Studio comes preinstalled with Qt6 kit (as of in Qt DS4). This kit is a stripped-down version of Qt and cannot be used in production.

You need to change the configuration of the Qt Design Studio for a custom setup. This document describes the steps to use Qt Design Studio with an environment based on the standard Qt kit installation.

This describes the workflow for enabling a custom kit on the Windows environment.

Enable the settings

Locate QtDesignStudio.ini file. This is stored in the same directory structure where Qt Design Studio is installed. On windows Qt is usually installed to C:\Qt directory. So the the path to Qt Design Studio ini file is:

C:\Qt\Tools\QtDesignStudio\share\qtcreator\QtProject\QtDesignStudio.ini

At this point, you should TAKE A BACKUP of the .ini file. In some cases, the file gets destroyed, and you cannot recover from it.