This guide contains a complete description of the elements, material models, procedures, input specifications, etc. It is the basic guide for Abaqus/Standard, Abaqus/Explicit, and Abaqus/CFD; and it provides both input file usage and Abaqus/CAE usage information. This guide regularly refers to the Abaqus Analysis User's Guide, so you should have it available as you work through the examples.

This guide includes detailed descriptions of how to use Abaqus/CAE for model generation, analysis, and results evaluation and visualization. Abaqus/Viewer users should refer to the information on the Visualization module in this guide.

This guide contains instructions for navigating, viewing, and searching the Abaqus HTML and PDF documentation. In addition, this guide explains how to use the PDF documentation to produce a high quality printed copy and how to use the icon in all PDF books except the Abaqus Scripting Reference Guide and the Abaqus GUI Toolkit Reference Guide to print a selected section of a book.

This guide contains detailed examples from which users can learn how to run simulations involving nontrivial physics. Many of the examples are worked with several different element types, mesh densities, and other variations. Cases include large motion of an elastic-plastic pipe hitting a rigid wall; inelastic buckling collapse of a thin-walled elbow; explosive loading of an elastic, viscoplastic thin ring; consolidation under a footing; buckling of a composite shell with a hole; and deep drawing of a metal sheet. It is generally useful to look for relevant examples in this guide and to review them when embarking on a new class of problem.

When you want to use a feature that you have not used before, you should look up one or more examples that use that feature. Then, use the example to familiarize yourself with the correct usage of the capability. To find an example that uses a certain feature, search the online documentation or use the abaqus findkeyword utility (see “Querying the keyword/problem database,” Section 3.2.16 of the Abaqus Analysis User's Guide, for more information).

All the input files associated with the examples are provided as part of the Abaqus installation. The abaqus fetch utility is used to extract sample Abaqus input files from the compressed archive files provided with the release (see “Fetching sample input files,” Section 3.2.17 of the Abaqus Analysis User's Guide, for more information). You can fetch any of the example files so that you can run the simulations yourself and review the results. You can also access the input files through the hyperlinks in the Abaqus Example Problems Guide.

This guide contains benchmark problems that provide evidence that the software can reproduce a result from a benchmark defined by an external body or institution such as NAFEMS. The problems are sufficient to show accuracy and convergence compared to the benchmark data. The NAFEMS benchmark problems are included in this guide.

This guide contains test cases that provide evidence that the implementation of the numerical model produces the expected results for one or several well-defined options in the code. It may be useful to run these problems when learning to use a new capability. In addition, the supplied input data files provide good starting points to check the behavior of elements, materials, etc.

This guide contains detailed, precise discussions of all theoretical aspects of Abaqus. It is written to be understood by users with an engineering background.

This guide contains a complete description of all the input options that are available in Abaqus/Standard, Abaqus/Explicit, and Abaqus/CFD.

This guide contains a complete description of all the user subroutines available for use in Abaqus analyses. It also discusses the utility routines that can be used when writing user subroutines.

This guide defines technical terms as they apply to the Abaqus Unified FEA Product Suite.

This guide contains brief descriptions of the new features available in the latest release of the Abaqus product line.

This guide describes how to install Abaqus and how to configure the installation for particular circumstances. Some of this information, of most relevance to users, is also provided in the Abaqus Analysis User's Guide.