What is an output request?

The Abaqus analysis products compute the values of many variables at every increment of a step. Usually you are interested in only a small subset of all of this computed data. You can specify the data that you want written to the output database by creating output requests. An output request consists of the following information:

Related Topics
Understanding output requests

  • The variables or variable components of interest.

  • The region of the model and the integration points from which the values are written to the output database.

  • The rate at which the variable or component values are written to the output database.

When you create the first step, Abaqus/CAE selects a default set of output variables corresponding to the step's analysis procedure. By default, output is requested from every node or integration point in the model and from default section points. In addition, Abaqus/CAE selects the default rate at which the variables are written to the output database. You can edit these default output requests or create and edit new ones.

Default output requests and output requests that you modified are propagated to subsequent steps in the analysis. If you have a large model that includes the default output requests and requests output from a large number of frames, the resulting output database will be very large. You can use a C++ program to extract data from a large output database and copy only selected frames to a second output database. For more information, see Decreasing the amount of data in an output database by retaining data at specific frames.

When your analysis is complete, you use the Visualization module to read the output database and graphically display the data that were written to it.

For detailed instructions on creating and editing output requests, see the following sections: