Products: ABAQUS/Standard ABAQUS/Explicit
Benefits: You can now control the translation behavior for NASTRAN elements that have more than one equivalent in ABAQUS. Version 6.6 also enables you to translate a greater number of NASTRAN entities than previous ABAQUS releases.
Description: The NASTRAN rigid elements RBE2 and RBE3 have more than one equivalent in ABAQUS. Using the surface_based_coupling option, you can specify whether these elements translate into *COUPLING, *KINEMATIC COUPLING, or *DISTRIBUTING COUPLING in the ABAQUS input file.
Additional options allow you to modify the default equivalents for other elements. CBAR and CBEAM elements are translated into the beam element specified by the cbar option. CQUAD4 elements are translated into the shell element specified by the cquad4 option. CHEXA elements are translated into the brick element specified by the chexa option. CTETRA elements are translated into the tetrahedron element specified by the ctetra option.
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