When you edit an object in the step in which it was created, you change the definition of the object in all of the steps in which it is active. In some cases you can also edit an object in steps in which its status is Propagated or Modified. In these cases the object's definition varies according to the analysis step.
The effects of editing a step-dependent object are summarized below.
If the status of the object is Created in the selected step:
Modifications that you make to the object in this step become effective in this step and propagate through all subsequent steps in which the condition is active unless you modify the object again in a later step.
The status of the object remains Created in the selected step and also remains unchanged in all subsequent steps. For more information, see “Understanding the status of an object in a step,” Section 3.4.4.
If the status of the object is Propagated or Modified in the selected step:
Modifications that you make to the object in this step become effective in this step and propagate through all subsequent steps in which the object is active.
The status of the object becomes (or remains) Modified in this step and remains unchanged in all other steps. (In other words, if the status of the object in the following step was Propagated before modification, its status in the following step remains Propagated after modification.) For example, the load applied over a sequence of general static analysis steps in Figure 3–18 has been modified in Step 3; the modifications remain in effect in Step 4 even though the status in Step 4 is Propagated. For more information, see “Understanding the status of an object in a step,” Section 3.4.4.
When you modify the data in any editor other than the Interaction editor, Abaqus/CAE indicates in the editor which data have been modified. These indications disappear if you change the data in the editor back to their original values.
In some cases you cannot edit a particular aspect of an object's definition because it must be consistent for the analysis to proceed correctly. For example, although you can modify the magnitude of a load in any analysis step, you cannot modify the region to which the load is applied. The areas in an editor that specify this kind of restricted data are unavailable in all steps except the one in which the object was created.
