How do I specify the local-1 direction for a beam in space in ABAQUS?

See the section on Cross-section orientation in the chapter Using Beam Elements of the Getting Started with ABAQUS/Standard manual for a description of this. 
There are a number of ways of specifying this. In the following figure n1 represents the local-1 direction. Consider a beam element of rectangular cross-section. Then local-1 direction is the direction parallel to the width (or base of the element). 


If the beams all lie in the X-Y plane then by default the negative Z axis is taken as the local-1 direction. The following are the different methods available in specifying the local-1 direction.

1. Specify an additional node in the element entry for the beam. If a third node is specified then the direction connecting node 1 to 3 defines the v direction in the above figure. This direction is used as an approximaten1 direction. ABAQUS then defines n2 direction as t x v. Having determined n2, ABAQUS defines the actualn1 direction as n2 x t. To summarise as long as v lies in the same plane as the t and n1 vectors no errors are introduced.
2. Specify the approximate n1 direction on the element section option. Then ABAQUS uses the same procedure as above (method 1) to calculate the n2 direction first and then re-calculates the n1 direction again which it uses in the analysis.

If both the additional node and the n1 direction were specified as part of the section properties then the additional node takes precedence. 
As mentioned earlier ABAQUS calculates the n2 direction from the t and the approximate n1 directions. There are two methods that can be used to override this.

1. Give the components of n2 as the 4th, 5th and the 6th data values following the nodal coordinates on the data lines of the *NODE option.
2. Use the *NORMAL option.

If both methods are used then *NORMAL takes precedence. When n2 direction is specified using one of the above methods the beam element tangent t is calculated as n1 x n2.