You can customize the viewports in your session by displaying an image or movie in the viewport background. Both background images and movies are viewport-specific, so you can display a different image or movie in each viewport in your session. Background images persist in a viewport as you change modules, while background movies appear in the Visualization module only. ABAQUS/CAE displays images and movies on top of the existing viewport background, so if you have customized the color of the viewport background, the image or movie may obscure some or all of the custom background color.
You can use background images to help you while you create your model; for example, an image of a completed prototype can help you to align part instances in an assembly. Alternatively, a background image can serve as a watermark or display a logo when you generate images of your model.
Note: In the Sketch module you can display a second background image that can help you sketch parts more effectively. ABAQUS/CAE displays the Sketcher background image on top of the module-wide background image when the Sketch module is selected and hides the Sketcher background image in all other modules. See “Managing images in the Sketcher background,” Section 19.9.9.
Background movies can help you to compare the results of an ABAQUS analysis with experimental results. For example, if you display a background movie that shows deformation in a prototype, you can animate the results from a similar ABAQUS analysis and compare the animations in a single viewport.
Before you can display an image or movie in the viewport background, you must add the file to your ABAQUS/CAE session. To add an image from the Image/Movie Options dialog box, click Create; then enter a name for the image or movie and provide its location. Images in the session are available in all modules, while movies are available in the Visualization module only. Both images and movies persist for your session only; they are not saved to the model database or output database.
ABAQUS/CAE supports background images in the following formats: Bitmap (.bmp), PNG (.png), TIFF (.tif), XPM (.xpm), PCX (.pcx), ICO (.ico), TGA(.tga), and RGB (.rgb).
ABAQUS/CAE supports background movies that satisfy the following two criteria:
The movie file's format must be supported on your ABAQUS/CAE platform. For Linux systems ABAQUS/CAE supports Audio Video Interleave format (.avi) and Quicktime format (.mov). For Windows systems ABAQUS/CAE supports AVI and Quicktime formats, as well as Mpeg movie format (.mpeg, .mpg, .mlv, .wm) and Windows Media Format (.asf, .wmv, .wm).
The codec used to create the background movie file must be one of the codecs available for creating movie files in ABAQUS/CAE. For example, you can display a Quicktime movie file in the viewport background only if it was created using one of the three codecs available for Quicktime movie creation in ABAQUS/CAE: Raw 8, Raw 24 or RLE 24. The available codecs for creating each movie file format in ABAQUS/CAE are described in “Choosing the animation file format,” Section 33.3.2.
