You can view or edit the association between orphan or bottom-up mesh elements and the underlying geometry by selecting Mesh
Associate Mesh with Geometry from the main menu bar and choosing a vertex, edge, or face that bounds a bottom-up region or a group of orphan elements. Elements generated by a top-down technique are associated automatically with the region geometry; you cannot view or edit the associativity between these native mesh elements and the corresponding region geometry.
To view or edit mesh-geometry associativity:
Enter the Mesh module. Select Part from the Object field in the context bar, and select a part that contains orphan mesh or bottom-up elements from the list.
From the main menu bar, select MeshAssociate Mesh with Geometry.
Abaqus/CAE displays prompts in the prompt area to guide you through the procedure.
Tip:
You can also click the 
tool in the Mesh module toolbox, or you can click the 
tool to display the Edit Mesh dialog box—the mesh association method is located in the Mesh category within the dialog box. (For more information on the Mesh module toolbox, see “Using the Mesh module toolbox,” Section 17.15.)
Select a geometric entity—a vertex, edge, or face—whose associativity you want to view or edit.
Abaqus/CAE highlights in yellow any nodes, element edges, or element faces that are associated with the selected geometry. If nothing is highlighted in yellow, no part of the mesh is associated with the selected entity.
Use the following selection techniques to change the mesh-geometry associativity (for more information, see Chapter 6, “Selecting objects within the viewport”):
Click a node, element edge, or element face to cancel any existing selections and begin selecting new items.
[Shift] + Click to add nodes, element edges, or element faces to the current selection, or [Ctrl] + Click to unselect items.
Use the by angle selection method available in the prompt area to select element faces based on the angle between them.
You can use the tools in the Selection toolbar to limit the types of objects that you can select in the viewport.
Note: In some cases you may need to pick interior mesh faces or edges to create the correct mesh-geometry association. To allow you to select interior objects, Abaqus/CAE does not limit your associativity selections to the “Objects closest to the screen” even when this selection option is active (see “Filtering your selection based on the position of the object,” Section 6.3.3, for more information). As a result, you need to ensure that you do not inadvertently associate unwanted elements, especially if you use drag-select to select multiple objects.
When you have finished selecting mesh objects to associate, click Done.
Abaqus/CAE saves the new associativity.
Repeat Steps 3 through 5 to verify or change the association of other areas, or click the cancel button 
in the prompt area to end the associativity procedure.
