AN OBJECT-ORIENTED APPROACH TO FULLY INTERACTIVE FINITE-ELEMENT SOFTWARE

An object-oriented approach is used to implement a fully interactive f inite element program. The program provides rapid response to user cha nges to the structure. The main features of the design of the program are: (i) an object-oriented distributed data model is used for the fin ite element objects; (ii) the calculation process is substructure-base d; (iii) multi-threading (i.e. concurrent processing) is used. The dis tributed data structure used matches closely the data structure used b y the mathematics of the sub-structure-based calculation process, and that of the multi-threading used in the program. The object-oriented a pproach makes it much easier to exercise control over the calculation processes, both in terms of the algorithms used, and in taking advanta ge of the multi-threading, (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.