A free body cross-section in Abaqus/CAE is an area of your model across which you want to display resultant forces and moments. Once you define a cross-section, Abaqus/CAE displays vectors that show the magnitude and direction of the resultant forces and moments across the area you select. Force vectors are displayed with a single arrowhead and moment vectors with a double arrowhead, as shown in the example in Figure 67–1; by default, the force vectors are red and the moment vectors are blue.

You can define the nodes and elements that comprise the cross-section using processes that closely resemble the definition of display groups. Abaqus/CAE enables you to specify the components of the cross-section by including surfaces, display groups, and elements or nodes by number; and you can pick items from the viewport, either by feature angle or individually. See “Creating or editing a free body cut,” Section 67.2, for detailed instructions. After you define the physical components of your free body cross-section, you can set the location of the summation point (about which resultant moments are taken), and you can indicate the coordinate system transformation that applies when vectors are displayed in component form.

Cross-sections can be created along mesh boundaries only; you cannot specify a cross-section along an arbitrary plane. You can create and display free body cuts only in the Visualization module.