When you create a remeshing rule, you must select the step to which the rule will be applied. You must also select the error indicator output variables that ABAQUS/CAE will write to the output database during the analysis and the frequency at which they are written. The error indicator output variables are the basis of the adaptive remeshing process. They provide information to ABAQUS/CAE that describes where a mesh needs refinement to approach or achieve the desired error indicator goals. In addition, ABAQUS/CAE uses the error indicator output variables to determine where the mesh can be coarsened without introducing unacceptable errors. “Error indicators,” Section 12.3.2 of the ABAQUS Analysis User's Manual.
You can use the adaptivity plotter plug-in to review the history of selected error indicators and the element count during an adaptivity analysis. For more information, see “Displaying the history of the adaptive remeshing error indicator,” Section 55.5.
To select the step and error indicator output variables for the remeshing rule:
From the Create Remeshing Rule dialog box, click the Step and Indicator tab.
Click the arrow to the right of the Step field, and select the step of your choice from the list that appears. The remeshing rule will be applied only during this step; however, you can apply a different remeshing rule with the same settings to another step in your model. Adaptive remeshing is available only for procedures that use ABAQUS/Standard. In addition, ABAQUS/CAE cannot apply adaptive remeshing in frequency extraction and steady-state dynamic procedures. For more information, see “Which procedures can I use with adaptive remeshing?,” Section 17.11.3.
Choose the frequency at which the error indicator output variables will be written to the output database. You can choose to write the variables after each increment or after the end of the last increment of the step. ABAQUS/CAE remeshes the model based on the value of the error indicators in the last increment of the step. However, if your analysis fails to converge and you saved the error indicator output variables after every increment, you can use the most recent values to remesh your model manually and to continue. For more information, see “Manually resizing and remeshing,” Section 17.19.6.
From the list of Error Indicator Variables, select one or more variables that will be written to the output database. For each variable that you select, ABAQUS/CAE also writes an accompanying base solution variable to the output database.
