Miscellaneous review procedures

For part instances that are meshed from geometry, you can specify whether the contact detection tool treats these instances as geometry or an element mesh during the search (see Specifying advanced search options for contact detection). After performing the search, you can recalculate the separation between meshed surfaces in a contact pair candidate based on either the geometry or mesh representation. You can also use this technique to calculate the separation between surfaces in previously defined interactions or ties that appear in the contact pair candidates table (see Configuring the layout of the contact pair candidates table).

1. Click mouse button 3 on the row representing a contact pair, and select Recalculate Separation from the menu that appears. You can also click the row and then click the button above the contact pair candidates table.

2. In the Recalculate Separation dialog box that appears, select Mesh to calculate surface separation based on the meshed representation of the model. Select Geometry to calculate surface separation based on the geometry representation of the model.

3. Click OK.

   Abaqus/CAE recalculates the separation between surfaces in the highlighted contact pair candidate and updates the cell in the Separation column.

You can set multiple cells to the same value using a single procedure:

1. Highlight multiple cells within the same column (see Selecting multiple items from lists and tables).

2. Click mouse button 3 anywhere within the highlighted cells, and select Edit Cells from the menu that appears. You can also click the button above the contact pair candidates table.

3. In the dialog box that appears, select the desired value.

4. Click OK.

   Abaqus/CAE sets all of the highlighted cells to the selected value.

To quickly highlight every cell in the table, click mouse button 3 anywhere in the table and select Select All from the menu that appears.