Creating surfaces

The Surface toolset allows you to create geometry or mesh surfaces. Geometry surfaces can consist of geometric faces and edges; mesh surfaces can consist of element faces and edges.

Related Topics
What is a surface?
Selecting objects within the viewport
In Other Guides
Defining contact pairs in Abaqus/Standard
Defining contact pairs in Abaqus/Explicit
Mechanical contact properties

  1. From the main menu bar, select ToolsSurfaceCreate.

    Tip: You can also click Create in the Surface Manager.

    The Create Surface dialog box appears. The dialog box lists the type of surface you are creating.

  2. In the dialog box:

    1. Enter a name for the surface. Surfaces created on different parts can use the same name; however, assembly surface names must be unique. For information on naming objects, see Using basic dialog box components.
    2. If necessary, select the surface type.
    3. Click Continue.

    If you create a mesh surface on a native part, Abaqus/CAE automatically displays the mesh if it is not already visible.

  3. Select the entities in the viewport that you want to include in the surface. If you are creating a geometry surface, Abaqus/CAE allows you to select only faces and edges. Similarly, if you are creating a mesh surface, Abaqus/CAE allows you to select only element faces and element edges. You can select interior entities to include in the surface. For more information, see Selecting interior surfaces. To create an edge-based surface, you must select the edge of a shell or the edge of an element. For more information, see What is a surface?.

  4. When you are finished selecting entities, click mouse button 2.

  5. If you are creating a geometry surface from a native part, you must specify the side of the selected face or the end of the selected wire. For more information, see Specifying a particular side or end of a region and Understanding the correspondence between geometric and physical objects.