A free body cross-section in Abaqus/CAE is an area of your model across which you want to display resultant forces and moments. Once you define a free body cross-section, Abaqus/CAE plots a free body cut with vectors that display the magnitude and direction of the resultant forces and moments across the free body cross-section. Force vectors are displayed with a single arrowhead and moment vectors with a double arrowhead, as shown in the example in Figure 64–1.

You can define the nodes and elements that comprise the free body cross-section using processes that closely resemble the definition of display groups. Abaqus/CAE enables you to specify the components of the free body cross-section by including surfaces, display groups, and elements or nodes by number; and you can pick items from the viewport, either by feature angle or individually. See “Creating a free body cut,” Section 64.2, for detailed instructions. After you define the physical components of your free body cross-section, you can set the location of the summation point (about which resultant moments are taken), and you can indicate the coordinate system transformation that applies when vectors are displayed in component form.

Free body cross-sections can be created along mesh boundaries only; you cannot specify a free body cross-section along an arbitrary plane. You can create and display free body cuts only in the Visualization module.