Abaqus Housekeeping -- Which files do you keep, and which do you delete?

[msjoey]

Hello FEA world.

Just curious, to see the difference between one FEA group to another. When you perform housekeeping of FEA files, which files do you delete and which ones you keep as record (in case you need to revisit the simulation or reuse some tricks)?

Personally I only save .cae and .inp files and delete the rest. Odb files are too big to save (except in cases when a simulation runs longer than a couple of hours, then the .odb becomes 'precious' to me). If I had to write a .py script I'd save it too. Screenshots and animation videos are saved in specific FEA report folders.

What working files do you save?

cheers
Jo

 

[rstupplebeen]

Sounds like your practices are identical to mine.

I incrementally save my appending the date to my files. When a project is done I only save files that were associated with a report. I also open the CAE files and remove any models that didn't make a report. Then compress the CAE file.

I hope this helps.


Rob Stupplebeen
OptimalDevice.com
My LinkedIn

 

[msjoey]

Thank you, it's good to feel validated! I'm in the process of writing FEA Best Practices for my team. I wouldn't want to make the mistake of telling everyone to do away with files that might be necessary to resolve unforeseen issues in the future...