What are orphan nodes and elements?

• Imported from an output database (for more information, see Importing a part from an output database)

• Imported from an Abaqus input file (for more information, see Importing a model)

• Created as a mesh part (for more information, see Creating a mesh part )

• Created in a bottom-up meshing procedure (for more information, see Bottom-up meshing)

• Created by certain mesh editing operations, such as create element and offset (for more information, see Using the mesh editing tools)

• Created by deleting the associativity with their parent geometry (for more information, see Deleting mesh-geometry associativity )

The first three methods above create an orphan mesh feature as the base feature of a new part. The remaining methods are part of the Edit Mesh toolset; these methods edit the existing mesh and, therefore, do not exist as features of the part. For more information, see The Edit Mesh toolset.

You can select the face of an orphan element as the sketch plane to add geometric features. In addition, in the Mesh module you can change the element type assigned to orphan elements, and you can verify and edit the mesh.