Hello members!

Abaqus provides odbCombine utility to combine results data of two or more output database(ODB) files into a single  output database(ODB) file. The utility is documented in the Abaqus Analysis User’s Manual. Abaqus/CAE also provides a Combine ODBs plug-in, which uses the same utility. I would like to share some clarification on the purpose of the utility.

The odbCombine utility is more suited to the following operations as mentioned in the documentation.

1) Output from different substructures in the same model.

2) Output from two different analysis products such as Abaqus/Standard and Abaqus/Explicit, as part of a co-simulation

The motivation behind the odbCombine is to “ADD” model data from ALL the odbs AND “FILTER” some results data from the master ODB and use that “history” for all the other ODBs. Even when you include filters in the other non master ODBs, only the matching frame and step data from the master ODB is used. In other words if the master does not have that step/frame (after its filtering) then the data is not copied. But if such step/frame does exist in the master ODB, and you have filter in the other ODBs to copy only say MISES, then only that field output is copied for the relevant part of the “MODEL”.