ABAQUS Tiny Tricks

I found the following two hints quite useful when working with ABAQUS:

Reducing .cae file’s size

ABAQUS is notorious for having large files. While cloud services are making it much easier to share large files, but it is still annoying to upload and download them over a slow network. The other problem is when you open the file and it occupies a great portion of the RAM.

There is a method to reduce the size of the current ABAQUS cae file. It results in much smaller files if you have deleted multiple items from your model. From the main menu bar, select File, then Compress MDB. MDB stands for model database. ABAQUS also uses the compression function if you select “Save As” instead of “Save” to save your model.

Recovering a corrupt/damaged CAE file

You are working rigorously almost everyday on a cae file and suddenly, when you want to open it, you get an annoying error. The error says “CAE database is corrupt. Fortunately, ABAQUS provide us with a Command Prompt command that can recover cae files from their associated journal, jnl, files. In order to use this capability:

• Remove the corrupted cae file from your working directory.
• Open Command Prompt and change the current directory to your working directory where ABAQUS created the jnl file using command cd.
• Enter the following command:

$ abaqus cae recover=[file_name].jnl

where [file_name] is the name of the journal file associated with the corrupt cae file.

After that, ABAQUS shows a command asking if you want to initiate the recovery process. When you click OK, it starts reading and executing the commands in the journal file and you should see the recovered cae file in your working directly in no time.

Compile Free form FORTRAN

Abaqus expects fixed-form FORTRAN from user for user subroutines. To compile free-form fortran, search C:\SIMULIA\EstProducts\2020\win_b64\SMA\site for an environment file, .env that contains compile_fortran value and add '/free' to the end of the parameters defined for compile_fortran.