Restart output requests

You can use the restart files created by Abaqus to continue an analysis from a specified step of a previous analysis. This section describes how you control the output of restart data. For a discussion of how you use the restart data in a subsequent job, see Restarting an analysis, and What are the model attributes?.

Related Topics
Understanding output requests
Understanding integrated, restart, diagnostic, and monitor output

By default, no restart information is written for an Abaqus/Standard analysis and restart information is written only at the beginning and end of each step for an Abaqus/Explicit analysis. However, default restart requests are created automatically for every step in an analysis. The Edit Restart Requests dialog box, invoked by selecting OutputRestart Requests from the main menu bar in the Step module, allows you to specify how often you want the restart information to be written.

You can specify the frequency at which Abaqus writes data to the restart files; however, the behavior of restart differs between analysis products.

Abaqus/Standard

You can request the frequency in increments or in time intervals. For an Abaqus/Standard step, you can choose whether the output is written at the exact time interval or at the closest approximation.

Abaqus/Explicit

For an Abaqus/Explicit analysis, you specify the number of equally spaced time intervals at which Abaqus writes data to the restart files. In addition, for an Abaqus/Explicit step you can choose whether the output is written at the exact time interval or at the closest approximation. However, you cannot avoid writing information to the restart files for Abaqus/Explicit steps; the number of time intervals must be set to one or greater.

For an Abaqus/Standard or an Abaqus/Explicit analysis, you can request that data written to the restart files overlay data from the previous increment. If you select this option, Abaqus retains the information from only one increment of each step in the restart files, thus minimizing the size of the files. By default, Abaqus does not overlay data.

For more information, see Restarting an analysis, and Restarting an analysis. For detailed instructions on requesting restart output, see Configuring restart output requests.

You can use the abaqus restartjoin execution procedure to extract data from the output database created by a restart analysis and append the data to a second output database. For more information, see Joining output database (.odb) files from restarted analyses.