USING OBJECTS TO HANDLE COMPLEXITY IN FINITE-ELEMENT SOFTWARE

Engineering software is becoming ever more complex. Finite element pro grams have sophisticated graphical input and output facilities, and ar e increasingly required to be linked to other software such as CAD or. databases. The paper shows how an object oriented approach to finite element programming can be used to handle this complexity. This requir es an approach that is very different from that adopted in more tradit ional programming. A foundation finite element class system is develop ed. This represents the essential data structure of the main finite el ement classes. It is then shown how this system can be used in a graph ical model of two dimensional structures. The finite element system im posed no constraints on the development of the graphical model, yet co uld still be used easily. An important feature is that the nodes and e lements are distributed around the graphical model, rather than being held centrally. For instance nodes may belong to points or lines of th e graphical model. This means that the data structure used in the prog ram more closely matches the way that the user of the program is likel y to think.