48.3.3 Creating surfaces

The Surface toolset allows you to create geometry or mesh surfaces. Geometry surfaces can consist of geometric faces and edges; mesh surfaces can consist of element faces and edges.

To create a surface:

  1. From the main menu bar, select ToolsSurfaceCreate.

    Tip:  You can also click Create in the Surface Manager.

    The Create Surface dialog box appears. The dialog box lists the type of surface you are creating.

  2. In the dialog box:

    1. Enter a name for the surface. For information on naming objects, see Using basic dialog box components, Section 3.2.1.

      All surfaces must have unique names regardless of whether they consist of geometric or mesh entities.

    2. Click Continue.

  3. Select the entities in the viewport that you want to include in the surface. If you are creating a geometry surface, ABAQUS/CAE allows you to select only faces and edges. Similarly, if you are creating a mesh surface, ABAQUS/CAE allows you to select only element faces and element edges. You can select interior entities to include in the surface. For more information, see Selecting interior surfaces, Section 6.2.8. To create an edge-based surface, you must select the edge of a shell or the edge of an element. For more information, see What is a surface?, Section 48.2.3.

  4. When you are finished selecting entities, click mouse button 2.

  5. If you are creating a geometry surface from a native part, you must specify the side of the selected face or the end of the selected wire. For more information, see Specifying a particular side or end of a region, Section 48.2.5 and Understanding the correspondence between geometric and physical objects, Section 6.1.3.


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