A geometric state refers to the internal geometric representation of a part or of the assembly; for example, the equations of the curves and surfaces that define the topology and the connectivity of those curves and surfaces. A geometric state is a snapshot of this internal representation. ABAQUS/CAE stores this snapshot and creates a geometric state in memory at regular intervals while you work on your model and then regenerate features.

If ABAQUS/CAE did not save geometric states, regeneration would start from the first feature that you created and continue through all the features that need to be regenerated, making regeneration very costly. By saving states, ABAQUS/CAE can determine which state is closest to the feature that was modified. Regeneration starts from that point and continues through all the features that need to be regenerated. As a result, the speed of regeneration can be increased significantly.

Ideally, to gain the maximum regeneration performance, you would save the geometric state after every feature modification. However, storing every state would consume large amounts of memory and hinder overall performance. Deciding how many states to save is a tradeoff between regeneration speed and memory consumption.

By default, ABAQUS/CAE automatically saves up to five geometric states for each part and for the assembly. If ABAQUS/CAE has already stored the specified number of states, it deletes one of the older states before saving the most recent state. You can use the Feature Options dialog box to change the number of states automatically saved by ABAQUS/CAE. ABAQUS/CAE uses an internal logic to decide when to create a geometric state; you cannot control when a state is created.