I am hoping someone can help me resolve this issue.

I have written a plug-in for CAE that allows the user to apply an initial imperfection, to a shell structure using the editNode() function. This works brilliantly and the desired shapes can be generated without an issue. However for models with more than a few nodes, this process is very very slow. This appears to be because Abaqus CAE wants to update the display after every node is moved, and Regenerating Feature and a progress bar flashes on the bottom of the screen during the morphing process.

My initial thought was to apply all the displacements in one use of the editNode function, rather than looping over each node. However, having looked into the editNode function, you can only apply a single displacement to multiple nodes, and not a different displacement for each node, so this was not suitable.

I want some way of stopping the display regenerating during the editNode process, I have tried changing the displayed object or even displaying a different viewport during this process. But neither of these options worked, there was no noticeable difference in speed.

One thing that does seem to significantly speed up the process however, and reduces the time required to 30-50% of the original time, is minimising the CAE window once the process has initiated. This seems to have the same effect as deactivating the regeneration of the display during the node moving process, which significantly speeds up the operation.

So my question is, is there a command to prevent Abaqus from performing the regeneration of the feature during the for loop which performs editNode on each of the nodes in the part. which can then be turned back on to regenerate the display once the nodes have all been moved. Alternatively is there a way of making the CAE window minimise for the duration of the editNode process and then restoring the CAE window once the editNode process has been completed.

I have looked in the Abaqus Scripting Reference manual for functions that might do either of these functions but nothing looked like it would perform these operations.

Thanks!