Create a Python project

To create a project, do one of the following:

• From the main menu, choose File | New Project

• On the Welcome screen, click New Project

New Project dialog opens.

In the New Project dialog, specify the project name and its location. The dialog may differ depending on the PyCharm edition.

Next, click to expand the Python Interpreter node, and select the new environment or existing interpreter, by clicking the corresponding radio-button.

The following steps depend on your choice:

• New environment using: if this option has been selected, choose the tool to be used to create a virtual environment. To do that, click the list and choose Virtualenv, Pipenv, or Conda.

  Next, specify the Location and Base interpreter of the new virtual environment.

  Select the Inherit global site-packages checkbox if you want that all packages installed in the global Python on your machine to be added to the virtual environment you're going to create. This checkbox corresponds to the --system-site-packages option of the virtualenv tool.

  Select the Make available to all projects checkbox if you want to reuse this environment when creating Python interpreters in PyCharm.

  When configuring the base interpreter, you need to specify the path to the Python executable. If PyCharm detects no Python on your machine, it provides two options: to download the latest Python versions from python.org or to specify a path to the Python executable (in case of non-standard installation).

  

• Previously configured interpreter: if this option has been selected, choose the desired interpreter from the list, or (if the desired interpreter is not found), click and choose the interpreter. See Configure a Python interpreter for details.

  note

  When PyCharm stops supporting any of the outdated Python versions, the corresponding Python interpreter is marked as unsupported.

  

• Create a main.py welcome script: keep this option selected if you want PyCharm to add the main.py file to your project. This file contains a very simple Python code sample and can be a starting point of your project.