When you create a part, you can choose the shape of its base feature to be a solid, a shell, a wire, or a point. If you select a point, you must specify the coordinates of the point and ABAQUS/CAE creates a part for which the base feature is a point at that location. In addition, the point is the reference point for the part. The modeling space of a point part can be three-dimensional, two-dimensional, or axisymmetric. The type of a point part can be either deformable or rigid.

You can continue to add features to a point part, such as datums and wires. More typically, you will use a point part to simplify your model by replacing a rigid part with a point part that has mass and inertia. You can add mass to a rigid point part; see “Modeling inertia,” Section 20.2. In addition, you can attach a display body to the point and use the display body to represent the original rigid part; see “Modeling display bodies,” Section 21.5. Finally, you can constrain the point part to your model by modeling a connector such as JOIN or REVOLUTE; see “Modeling connectors,” Section 21.3.