What is Associative Export and Import?

Associative export and import allow you to easily transfer a part or assembly from CATIA to Abaqus/CAE; you can subsequently modify the part or assembly in CATIA and propagate these modifications to Abaqus/CAE without losing any analysis features assigned to the model in Abaqus/CAE.

The SIMULIA Associative Interface for Abaqus/CAE is useful when you are iterating on the design of a model in CATIA based on the results of analyses conducted in Abaqus. The following figure shows the connection between CATIA and Abaqus/CAE using associative import.

When you use associative export and import to transfer the model from CATIA to Abaqus/CAE, the model appears in the current Abaqus/CAE viewport. The parts and part instances from the Assembly Design and Part Design apps are stored in the Abaqus/CAE model database and appear in the Model Tree. You can use the Assembly Design and Part Design apps to modify the parts or to change the position of instances in the assembly; when the modifications are complete and the model is ready to be analyzed, perform another associative import. Every time you import the model into Abaqus/CAE, Abaqus/CAE updates the current viewport and the Model Tree to reflect the changes.

In addition, associative export and import retain any features that you added to the model with Abaqus/CAE. Any of the features that you created in Abaqus/CAE—such as partitions, loads, boundary conditions, sets, and surfaces—are regenerated each time you import the modified model from CATIA to Abaqus/CAE. For example, if you partitioned a cell with Abaqus/CAE, the partition is regenerated each time you import the model from CATIA into Abaqus/CAE. However, the regeneration of features may fail if the changes that you made with CATIA change the topology of the model.

When you import an assembly of part instances, Abaqus/CAE creates parts that correspond to the imported part instances and maintains the relationship between the parts and their instances. In most cases Abaqus/CAE retains the names of the parts and the part instances from the CATIA model.

The SIMULIA Associative Interface for Abaqus/CAE also allows you to modify parameters that define CATIA features—such as a hole radius or an extrusion length—from within Abaqus/CAE. The updated parameters are propagated to both the CATIA model and the Abaqus/CAE model.