Abaqus/CAE displays connectors modeled using connector section assignments in the Visualization module. You can control the display of connectors using display groups. Each connector is listed as an element set in the output database. For more information on display groups, see “Creating or editing a display group,” Section 78.2.1.

You can also use the Entity Display options in the ODB Display Options dialog box to control the display of symbols that represent connectors. You can control the following:

• The highlighting of wire endpoints

• The display of local orientation axes for connectors

• The display of connector type labels

• The size of the displayed symbols

For information on the symbols that represent connectors modeled in Abaqus/CAE, see “Understanding symbols that represent interactions, constraints, and connectors,” Section 15.10. For more information on controlling the display of the symbols, see “Controlling the display of model entities,” Section 55.10.

For example, you can use display groups to display four part instances and three connector element sets of the crank mechanism, as shown in Figure 24–4.

The highlighting of the wire endpoints and the display of connector type labels have been toggled off so that only the local connector orientations are displayed. You can produce a time history animation to view the changes in the connector orientations during the mechanism operation. For more information, see “Time history animation,” Section 49.1.1.

For information on plotting connector output results, see Chapter 47, “X–Y plotting.”