After you have assigned beam sections to the wire regions of a part, you must assign an orientation to the beam sections by defining the approximate local 1-direction of the cross-section. The beam orientations that you assign to a part are assigned automatically to all instances of that part in the assembly. You can use the Query toolset to verify that you have assigned the correct beam orientation to a selected region. For more information, see “Using the Query toolset to obtain assignment information,” Section 12.14.
To assign a beam orientation to a part:
If the part to which you want to assign an orientation is not visible in the current viewport, click the name of the desired part in the Part list located under the toolbar.
The selected part appears in the current viewport.
From the main menu bar, select Assign
Beam Section Orientation.
Tip:
You can also click the 
tool in the Property module toolbox.
Select the wire region of the part from the viewport, and click mouse button 2 to indicate that you have finished selecting. (For more information, see Chapter 6, “Selecting objects within the viewport”.)
Tip:
You can limit the types of objects that you can select in the viewport by clicking the selection filter tool 
in the prompt area and then clicking the selection filter of your choice in the dialog box that appears. See “Using the selection options,” Section 6.3, for more information.
If you would rather select from a list of existing sets, do the following:
Click Sets on the right side of the prompt area.
ABAQUS/CAE displays the Region Selection dialog box containing a list of available part sets. Part sets containing only wires appear in the list.
Select the part set of interest, and click Continue.
Note: The default selection method is based on the selection method you most recently employed. To revert to the other method, click the button—Select in Viewport or Sets—on the right side of the prompt area.
ABAQUS/CAE prompts you to enter the vector representing an approximate 
-direction (the local 1-direction of the cross-section). For more information on defining the -direction, see “Beam element cross-section orientation,” Section 23.3.4 of the ABAQUS Analysis User's Manual.
Note:
If the part was created in two-dimensional modeling space, the -direction is always normal to the X–Y plane (0.0, 0.0, –1.0).
ABAQUS/CAE displays the resulting (, 
, 
) axis system on the selected wire regions.
If the displayed (, , ) axis system is correct, click OK in the prompt area to confirm your choice. If you wish to change the beam orientation, click the Previous button (
) and enter a new -direction.
If you want to assign beam orientations to additional wire regions, repeat Steps 3 through 5.
Click mouse button 2 to indicate you have finished assigning beam orientations.
