You can apply interactions, constraints, and connectors to geometry or to orphan nodes and elements.
- Interactions and constraints
If you apply an interaction or constraint to geometry, symbols appear approximately equally spaced over the surface or surfaces to which the interaction or constraint is applied. If the interaction or constraint definition involves a node region rather than a surface, the symbols appear equally spaced on the edges of the node region and at any vertices in the node region. If the interaction or constraint is applied to a single vertex, a symbol appears at that vertex.
If you apply the interaction or constraint to orphan nodes or elements, symbols appear at the center of each element face for surface-based regions or at the nodes for node-based regions.
For interactions (and prescribed conditions) that use analytical field distributions, the symbols are scaled based on the analytical field value. In addition, a plus sign (+) or a minus sign (−) is displayed inside each symbol to indicate whether the magnitude of the interaction is positive or negative at that location. Abaqus/CAE displays scaled-down symbols for interactions when an analytical field evaluates to zero for a portion of its region. These scaled-down symbols are noticeably smaller than the default symbol size. For examples of these symbols, see Understanding prescribed condition symbol type, color, and size. For more information, see Using analytical expression fields.
- Connectors
When you apply a connector to wires, squares appear at the first points of the wires and triangles appear at the second points of the wires. If you specify an orientation other than the global coordinate system for orientation 1, an orientation triad appears at the first points of the wires. For orientation 2, an orientation triad appears at the second points of the wires only if you specify a coordinate system by name; if you toggle on the option to Use orientation 1, the orientation triad does not appear at the second points. The connection type label appears midway along a line between the endpoints of the selected wires. You can also display the tag associated with the connector section assignment, though this display is turned off by default.
For information about controlling the visibility of these symbols, see Controlling the display of attributes.