This chapter discusses features related to creating your model, such as node and element definition in Abaqus/Standard or Abaqus/Explicit and part and assembly definition in Abaqus/CAE. It provides an overview of the following enhancements:

• “Enhancements to orientations for material orientations and composite layups,” Section 4.1

• “Enhancements to distributions,” Section 4.2

• “Selection of individual faces for repair of face normals,” Section 4.3

• “Geometry repair for shells and solid parts that contain multiple cells,” Section 4.4

• “Improvements to repair of small edges and small faces,” Section 4.5

• “Ability to select attachment points for additional modeling tasks,” Section 4.6

• “Automatic validity check after geometry repair,” Section 4.7

• “Querying mass properties for beams and trusses,” Section 4.8

• “Stitching gaps in non-manifold parts,” Section 4.9

• “Enhancements to the extended finite element method to model fracture mechanics,” Section 4.10

• “Enhancements to the Datum toolset,” Section 4.11