BRIGADE/Plus 2026 introduces a range of important updates designed to modernize your analysis workflows and prepare your scripting environment for the future. Discover what’s new in this release and how the latest improvements can support your day-to-day work.
Looking for the regular BRIGADE/Plus and BRIGADE/Standard 2026 release-notes? You can find them here TECHNIA customer care - Software Download. Select BRIGADE/Plus or Standard and the version you are interested in.
The Property module in CAE now supports this option.
Benefits: This feature extends the capabilities of CAE.
The *BEAM SECTION keyword is now fullysupported in the Property module,which means that:
In other words: The CAE now offers full support for the classic *BEAM SECTION keyword, which previously only could be used via text input.
In an inp-file, you can now specify the name of a previously defined node-based surface, in which case the nodes included in the surface will be assigned to the specified node set. This method can be used only to define sorted node sets.
Input File Usage:
NSET, NSET=name, SURFACE=name
For example, the following lines add all nodes that are included in the surface named surf_top to node set A15:
SURFACE, NAME=surf_top
NSET, NSET=A15, SURFACE=surf_top
The CAE now supports rotor dynamic loads as a rotational body force type in CAE.
Benefits: This support allows greater flexibility to define a rotor dynamic load as a rotational body force in CAE without having to use the keyword editor.
You can now enforce the nodal normals for beams in space to be exactly as you specify them in the model definition.
Benefits: This new feature prevents nodal normals from getting reversed in certain special (rule-based) situations.
For beams in space you can define the nodal normal either by giving its direction cosines as part of each node definition or by giving them in a user-specified normal definition. By default, in certain situations, the nodal normal n2 that you specified might be automatically reversed by BRIGADE/Plus. To prevent such default behaviour, you can now enforce that the normal used by BRIGADE/Plus is exactly as you defined it (and is not reversed).
In the example below, the user specified that all the beam normals point radially outward. However ,as shown at left, by default three of the beam normals are automatically reversed by BRIGADE/Plus during the pre-processing phase. These normals end up pointing radially inward, which leads to discontinuities in the beam normal indifferent regions of the model. You can use the new capability to prevent this from happening, as shown at the right in the image below.
Input File Usage:
Use the following option to define a user-specified normal (can be reversed):
*NORMAL, BEAM NORMAL=RULE BASED
Use the following option to hold the user-specified normal fixed without any rule-based reversal:
*NORMAL, BEAM NORMAL=FIXED
CAE Usage:
Defining the nodal normal is not supported in CAE; the nodal normal calculated by BRIGADE/Plus is always used.
You can now specify whether common warnings are reported by the BRIGADE/Plus analysis input file processor.
Benefits: Reducing the number of warnings makes evaluation of the preprocessed model more convenient.
The BRIGADE/Plus analysis input file processor now suppresses common warnings for unsupported output requests by default.
Many warnings issued by the BRIGADE/Plus analysis input file processor for invalid output requests, such as those issued for output requests that are not supported for specific element or procedure types, are informational only and warrant no action by the user. For large models the number of these warnings can be very high and can make it difficult to evaluate of the pre-processed model.
You can use the new environment variable output_warnings_level to specify if common warnings are reported.
output_warnings_level = ALL, all warnings associated with output request validation will be reported by analysis input file processor.
output_warnings_level = OFF, no warnings associated with output request validation will be reported.
output_warnings_level = DEFAULT, which will not include common warnings, such as those for output not supported for specific procedures or element types
The new state space solver for transient modal dynamic analysis of systems with non-diagonal modal damping operators is now the default solver in CAE.
Benefits: The state space solver is unconditionally stable and offers improved performance for models with many time increments and a moderate number of modes.
Benefits: Customers and partners can leverage the latest functionality provided in Python 3.
Python has been updated from Python version 2.7.15 to Python version 3.10.5.
Python 3 introduces a number of changes that break backward-compatibility with existing Python 2 code. As a result, scripts originally written using Python 2 syntax might not run without modification in Python 3. However, in most cases it is possible to modify your scripts so that they will run in both Python 2.7 and Python 3.
The following functionality is impacted:
A conversion utility is provided to assist with converting Python 2 syntax to Python 3. While it will automatically convert many common syntax changes, not all Python 2 syntax can be converted automatically; therefore, some manual conversion might be required to ensure that Python scripts run properly with the new version. You can invoke the conversion utility from the command line using the command.
Brigade python -mabqPy2to3 <script/directory>
The utility writes a log file and saves the original versions of the files on which it operates. If you provide a directory to the utility, it recursively traverses through that directory and subdirectories looking for *.py files. You can include -future False on the command line if you are not worried about maintaining Python 2.7 forward compatibility. You can also access the conversion utility as part of the script upgrade plug-in utility in CAE (available from Plug-Ins > Abaqus > Upgrade Scripts). It is run if you upgrade scripts to 2024.
You can read more about what the upgrade to Python version 3.10.5 brings in the following article: https://blog.technia.com/en/simulation/modernizing-brigade/plus-in-2026-python-support
New Method getMemberFromAll for Node and Element Sequences.
There is a new Python API on node and element sequences to retrieve a member value for each item in the sequence. This applies to MeshNodeArray, MeshElementArray, MeshFaceArray, ODBMeshNodeArray, and ODBMeshElementArray.
Benefits: Retrieving a member from a large sequence(for example, the node label for every node) is much faster using this method than iterating over the sequence.
If you have any questions about the updates in BRIGADE/Plus 2026, or would like to discuss how these improvements may impact your workflows, you are always welcome to contact the BRIGADE team. We’ll be happy to help you get the most out of the new capabilities – whether it’s modelling, analysis, execution, or scripting.