Useful Abaqus Commands

Abaqus is a commonly used finite element suite and it comes packaged with python 2.7. Here are several useful commands for model creation and processing.

Coordinates in place of Index

Using default journal options, Abaqus defines its objects by index, called native masks. The following snippet instead tells Abaqus to store that information as coordinates.

session.journalOptions.setValues(replayGeometry=COORDINATE, recoverGeometry=COORDINATE)

Libraries

To create a Abaqus model from scratch, the following libraries are needed.

from abaqus import *
from abaqusConstants import *
from caeModules import *
from driverUtils import executeOnCaeStartup
executeOnCaeStartup()
session.viewports['Viewport: 1'].partDisplay.geometryOptions.setValues(
    referenceRepresentation=ON)
import numpy as np

Script Executions

Abaqus can be called from the terminal with abaqus cae. For complete models, noGUI runs Abaqus in the background.

abaqus cae script=EXAMPLE.py 

abaqus cae noGUI=EXAMPLE.py

Images

The following snippets generate images for publications.

Simple screenshots

For simple screenshots, the following snippet disables all viewport objects, and sets the background to white.

session. linkedViewportCommands.setValues(linkViewports=True)
session.graphicsOptions.setValues(backgroundStyle=SOLID, backgroundColor='#FFFFFF')
session.viewports['Viewport: 1'].viewportAnnotationOptions.setValues(triad=OFF,	legend=OFF, title=OFF, state=OFF, annotations=OFF, compass=OFF)

Publication Images

For higher quality images, the following exports a render from Abaqus directly:

myFile = 'ExamplePicture' # extension not needed, saves to the working directory
session.printToFile(fileName=myFile, format=PNG, canvasObjects=(
    session.viewports['Viewport: 1'], ))

Deformed Geometry

You can export the deformed geometry using the following script:

fileName = './name.obj' # extension needed, saves to the working directory
session.writeOBJFile(fileName=fileName, 
	canvasObjects=(session.viewports['Viewport: 1'], )) # Exports the main window

This script can be extended to export a sequence of geometries for a each frame in a ODB. However, for complex models this can result in several terabytes of models being generated, so it is not recommended. Instead, I would suggest linking a modeling program like Blender to read from and ODB to dynamically create a render of the model.

Set font to Computer Modern (LaTeX font)

Assuming you have computer modern installed:

fontName = 'cmu serif-medium-r-normal'
fontSize = 240 # for 24pt, 0 is the decimal precision. Default is 12pt.
session.viewports['Viewport: 1'].viewportAnnotationOptions.setValues(
    legendFont='-*-'+fontName+'-*-*-'+str(fontSize)+'-*-*-p-*-*-*')

Replace fontName with your target font, common ones:

Font Name	Command
Times New Roman	times new roman-medium-r-normal
Arial	arial-medium-r-normal
Objectively the best	comic sans ms-medium-r-normal

The information after the font name refers to other characteristics such as italicized. I don’t recommend modifying these extensions manually.