When you execute an adaptivity analysis, ABAQUS/CAE submits a succession of ABAQUS/Standard jobs as it attempts to reduce the mesh discretization error in your model. This error is characterized by error indicator measures calculated by ABAQUS/Standard. Global norms of these indicators are calculated by ABAQUS/CAE, and you can use these norms to evaluate the performance and effectiveness of the adaptive remeshing process. For more information, see “Error indicators,” Section 12.3.2 of the ABAQUS Analysis User's Manual.

The adaptivity plotter plug-in enables you to plot these error indicator norms and to view a graphical representation of the effectiveness of the adaptive remeshing process. You can access the plug-in from the Plug-ins menu in any module. The plug-in reads the model database (.cae) file associated with the adaptive remeshing jobs; therefore, the file must be available.