When you create a new part, you must choose the part's approximate size. The size that you enter is used by ABAQUS/CAE to calculate the size of the Sketcher sheet and the spacing of its grid. You should set the approximate size of the part to match the largest dimension of the finished part. If you find subsequently that the part exceeds the size of the Sketcher sheet, use the Sketch customization options to increase the sheet size. You cannot change a part's approximate size after you have created it. However, you can copy the part to a new part and scale the part during the copy operation. For more information, see “Copying a part,” Section 11.18.3.
ABAQUS/CAE uses the ACIS geometry engine to represent a part. ACIS is an object-oriented toolkit designed for use as a geometry engine for modeling applications and is considered the industry standard for geometry modeling. The ACIS format uses a tolerance of 10–6 to define a geometric entity, such as a vertex or an edge. As a result, you should specify an approximate size that is greater than 0.001 (10–3) units to allow for node and element dimensions that are within the ACIS tolerance. Similarly, it is recommended that you specify an approximate size that is less than 100000 (105) units. If you find that you need to specify an approximate size that is outside the suggested range, you should consider adopting a different set of units.
