The Interaction module provides the following managers that you can use to organize and manipulate objects associated with a given model:
The Interaction Manager allows you to create and manage interactions.
The Interaction Property Manager allows you to create and manage interaction properties.
The Contact Controls Manager allows you to create and manage contact controls for surface-to-surface contact and self-contact interactions.
The Constraint Manager allows you to create and manage constraints.
The Connector Section Manager allows you to create and manage connector sections.
The Connector Section Assignment Manager allows you to create and manage connector section assignments.
The Create, Edit, Copy, Rename, and Delete buttons in the managers allow you to create new objects or to edit, copy, rename, and delete existing ones. In the Connector Section Assignment Manager, you can only create, edit, or delete connector section assignments. You can also initiate these procedures using the Interaction, Interaction
Property, InteractionContact Controls, Constraint, ConnectorSection, and ConnectorAssignment menus from the main menu bar. After you select a management operation from the main menu bar, the procedure is exactly the same as if you had clicked the corresponding button inside the manager dialog box.
The Interaction Manager is a step-dependent manager, which means that it contains additional information on the history of each interaction through the analysis. The Interaction Manager is shown in Figure 15–2.
You can use the icons in the column along the left side of the manager to suppress interactions or to resume previously suppressed interactions for an analysis. The suppress and resume procedures are also available from the Interaction menu in the main menu bar. Similarly, you can suppress and resume constraints using the Constraint Manager or the Constraint menu. For more information, see “Suppressing and resuming objects,” Section 3.4.3.
The Move Left, Move Right, Activate, and Deactivate buttons allow you to manipulate the stepwise history of interactions. For more information, see “Modifying the history of a step-dependent object,” Section 3.4.6.
For detailed instructions on creating interactions, interaction properties, constraints, connector sections, and connector section assignments, see “Using the Interaction module,” Section 15.11.
