This chapter provides an overview of the Abaqus documentation.

The documentation for Abaqus is organized into a collection, with guides grouped by function. For information about the guides available in the Abaqus documentation collection, see “The Abaqus documentation collection,” Section 1.1.

HTML is the primary format for the Abaqus documentation. The HTML guides, which contain all the available content including context-sensitive help pages for Abaqus/CAE, are viewed through a web browser. Default and advanced searching techniques are available with the HTML documentation. For more information about the HTML documentation, see Part II, “Using the Abaqus HTML Documentation.”

The same content, with the exception of the context-sensitive help pages for Abaqus/CAE, is available in the PDF documentation. The PDF guides are viewed through a PDF viewer. The PDF searching capabilities are determined by the PDF viewer used to display the documentation. The PDF documentation provides a portable reference for Abaqus and offers the ability to obtain high-quality printed documentation pages. You can print from the HTML documentation; but to print sections that are larger than a few pages, it is recommended that you print the PDF documentation. For more information about the PDF documentation, see Part III, “Using the Abaqus PDF documentation.”