Visualize Abaqus Element Local Coordinate Systems#

Problem description#

An Abaqus cross-section can contain an element property reference coordinate system (property_ref_csys) that determines the material axes. Before sending the model to a solver, it is useful to inspect both the complete mesh and the direction of the local y1, y2, and y3 axes.

Explaination of the solution#

plot_local_csys.py reads sg2_airfoil.inp as a 2D Abaqus structure gene and passes its mesh to sgio.create_pyvista_plotter(). The reusable scene factory converts the mesh, resolves each element’s local coordinate system, and exports a PNG scene. Red, green, and blue arrows represent y1, y2, and y3, respectively.

The airfoil has many elements, so the script displays an evenly spaced sample of 500 coordinate systems by default. The mesh remains complete; use --max-axes to display more or fewer arrows.

Install PyVista once:

uv sync --extra pyvista

Run the example:

uv run python examples/convert_abaqus_cs_to_vabs/plot_local_csys.py

Result#

The script writes sg2_airfoil_local_csys.png with the local-axis arrows overlaid. --axis-scale is an arrow length in mesh coordinate units. If it is omitted, the factory uses 2.5% of the mesh bounding-box diagonal.

../_images/sg2_airfoil_local_csys.png

List of all files#