The first step in accounting for a component's flexibility in MSC.ADAMS is to model that component as an Abaqus substructure. This process involves creating an Abaqus finite element model of the component. General guidelines for building Abaqus models with substructures are described in “Using substructures,” Section 10.1.1 of the Abaqus Analysis User's Manual. The specific requirements for building substructure models that can be exported to MSC.ADAMS are described in the following sections.

The Abaqus Interface for MSC.ADAMS creates modal neutral files that do not contain stress or strain from a single results file that is written by an Abaqus analysis, as described in “Setting up the Abaqus model to create a modal neutral file without stress or strain,” Section 2.2. If you want the Abaqus Interface for MSC.ADAMS to translate stress or strain to the modal neutral file, a second Abaqus analysis is required, as discussed in “Setting up the Abaqus model to create a modal neutral file with stress or strain,” Section 2.3.