The Abaqus/CAE example scripts in this chapter illustrate the following:

• How you can use commands from the Abaqus Scripting Interface to create a simple model, submit it for analysis, and view the results. “Reproducing the cantilever beam tutorial,” Section 8.1, uses Abaqus Scripting Interface commands to reproduce the cantilever beam tutorial described in Appendix B, “Creating and Analyzing a Simple Model in Abaqus/CAE,” of Getting Started with Abaqus: Interactive Edition.

• How you can use the Abaqus Scripting Interface to control the output from the Visualization module in Abaqus/CAE (Abaqus/Viewer).

  • “Opening the tutorial output database,” Section 8.2.1, explains how to use abaqus fetch to retrieve the Abaqus/CAE tutorial output database.

  • “Opening an output database and displaying a contour plot,” Section 8.2.2, explains how to open the tutorial output database, display a contour plot, and print the resulting viewport to a file.

  • “Printing a contour plot at the end of each step,” Section 8.2.3, explains how to open the tutorial output database, customize the legend, display a contour plot at the end of each step, and print the resulting viewports to a file.

• How you can introduce more complex programming techniques into your Abaqus Scripting Interface scripts. “Investigating the skew sensitivity of shell elements,” Section 8.3, reproduces the problem found in “Skew sensitivity of shell elements,” Section 2.3.4 of the Abaqus Benchmarks Manual. You use Abaqus/CAE to create the model, and you use Abaqus Scripting Interface commands to parameterize an evaluation of the model by changing its geometry and element type. The example investigates the sensitivity of the shell elements in Abaqus to skew distortion when they are used as thin plates.

• How you can use functions available in the caePrefsAccess module to edit the display preferences and GUI settings in the abaqus_v6.12.gpr file. “Editing display preferences and GUI settings,” Section 8.4, describes how to query for and set several default display and GUI behaviors in Abaqus/CAE.

The example scripts from this manual can be copied to the user's working directory by using the Abaqus fetch utility:

abaqus fetch job=scriptName