This manual contains a complete description of the elements, material models, procedures, input specifications, etc. It is the basic manual 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 Manual, so you should have it available as you work through the examples.

This manual 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 manual.

This manual contains instructions for navigating, viewing, and searching the Abaqus HTML and PDF documentation. In addition, this manual 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 Manual and the Abaqus GUI Toolkit Reference Manual to print a selected section of a book.

This manual contains detailed examples designed to illustrate the approaches and decisions needed to perform meaningful linear and nonlinear analysis. Many of the examples are worked with several different element types, mesh densities, and other variations. Typical cases are 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 manual 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 3.2.12 of the Abaqus Analysis User's Manual, 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 3.2.13 of the Abaqus Analysis User's Manual, 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 Manual.

This manual contains benchmark problems and analyses used to evaluate the performance of Abaqus; the tests are multiple element tests of simple geometries or simplified versions of real problems. The NAFEMS benchmark problems are included in this manual.

This manual contains basic test cases, providing verification of each individual program feature (procedures, output options, MPCs, etc.) against exact calculations and other published results. 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 manual contains detailed, precise discussions of all theoretical aspects of Abaqus. It is written to be understood by users with an engineering background.

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

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

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

This manual 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 Manual.