This guide is the ABAQUS manual that you will use most often. It is the reference manual for all of the capabilities in ABAQUS and contains a complete description of the elements, material models, procedures, input specifications, etc. This guide regularly refers to the ABAQUS Analysis User's Manual, so you should have a copy available as you work through the examples.

This online manual for ABAQUS/CAE includes detailed descriptions of how to use ABAQUS/CAE for model generation, analysis, and results evaluation and visualization. The information on the Visualization module in this manual applies to ABAQUS/Viewer as well.

This online manual contains instructions for viewing and searching the ABAQUS online documentation.

This manual contains more than 75 detailed examples designed to illustrate the approaches and decisions needed to perform meaningful linear and nonlinear analysis. Typical cases are large motion of an elastic-plastic pipe hitting a rigid wall; inelastic buckling collapse of a thin-walled elbow; explosive loading of an elastic, viscoplastic thin ring; consolidation under a footing; buckling of a composite shell with a hole; and deep drawing of a metal sheet. The description of each problem includes a discussion of the choice of element type and mesh density.

When you want to use a feature that you have not used before, you should look up one or more examples that use that feature. Then, use the example to familiarize yourself with the correct usage of the capability. To find an example that uses a certain feature, search the online documentation or use the abaqus findkeyword utility (see “Execution procedure for querying the keyword/problem database,” Section 3.2.11 of the ABAQUS Analysis User's Manual, for more information). All the input files associated with the examples are provided as part of the ABAQUS installation. A utility that gives you access to these files, called ABAQUS/Fetch, is provided with every ABAQUS release. The syntax for this utility is

abaqus fetch job=<file name>

This online-only volume contains benchmark problems and standard analyses used to evaluate the performance of ABAQUS; results are compared against exact calculations and other published results. These problems, like the example problems, offer a good starting point for learning about the behavior of elements and material models. The NAFEMS benchmark problems are included in this manual. The input files are also supplied as part of the installation and can be accessed just like example problem input files.

This online-only volume contains basic test problems that provide quality assurance testing of each individual program feature (procedures, output options, MPCs, etc.). It may be useful to run these problems when learning to use a new capability. The input files are also supplied as part of the installation and can be accessed just like example problem input files.

This online-only volume contains detailed, precise discussions of the theoretical aspects of ABAQUS. It is written to be understood by users with an engineering background and is not required on a routine basis.

This manual contains a complete description of all the input options available in ABAQUS, including any parameters that may be used with a given option.

This online-only volume contains a complete description of all the user subroutines available for use in ABAQUS analyses. It also discusses the utility routines that can be used when writing user subroutines.

This document contains brief descriptions of the new features available in the latest release of the ABAQUS product line.

This document, which is provided with each ABAQUS license, describes how to install ABAQUS and how to configure the installation for particular circumstances. Some of this information, of most relevance to users, is also included in the User's manuals.

This document describes the QA procedures followed by ABAQUS. It is a controlled document, provided to customers who subscribe to the Quality Monitoring Service.

Notes and workshops are available for many features and applications for which ABAQUS is used, such as metal forming or heat transfer. The notes are used in the technical seminars that ABAQUS, Inc., offers to help users improve their understanding and usage of ABAQUS. While they are not intended as stand-alone tutorial material, they are sufficiently comprehensive that they can be used in that mode. Frequently, the lecture notes on a topic serve as a good introduction to the topic, making the User's Manual easier to understand. The list of available lecture notes is included in the Documentation Price List or can be found under Products on the ABAQUS Home Page at www.abaqus.com.

ABAQUS has a home page on the World Wide Web (www.abaqus.com), containing a variety of useful information about the ABAQUS suite of programs, including: