Description: Certain display methods for field output, such as line- and banded-type contour plots, require that results data originally saved at the element centroids or integration points be recalculated at the nodes. Element values are extrapolated to the nodes, and then contributions from multiple elements must be assessed at the nodes. Figure 15–9 shows the result options that you can use to control the calculations. Use the averaging controls to view different approximations of the nodal results.

If you choose to use region boundaries, results are averaged only within the defined regions. The default regions are based on the section assignments in the model, but you can specify your own regions based on either element sets or display groups. You can view the selected averaging regions by using them to color code the model. If you have already used display groups to exclude a portion of the model from the view, you can choose to average nodal results based on all contributing elements or on the displayed elements.

Use the computation order to control how ABAQUS calculates invariants. If invariants are calculated prior to averaging, you can select a threshold value for the difference in element values at a node; above the threshold, ABAQUS suspends averaging and displays a discontinuity in the results. To view discontinuities in the results, you can minimize the threshold value or suppress averaging entirely. If invariants are computed after averaging, ABAQUS averages all results—hiding any discontinuities—to maintain a valid basis for computing the invariants.

By default, the auto-computed limits for contour plots now include the averaged results. To set contour limits using only the extrapolated values (as was the default in previous versions of ABAQUS/CAE), you must toggle off Average element output at nodes in the Result Options dialog box to suppress nodal averaging.

Visualization module:
   ResultOptions
   OptionsContour