Solver of finite element analysis

There is software specialized in finite element processing. They are commonly called "Solver." VisualFEA has the capability of such as solver embedded in itself. However, you may use VisualFEA together with other solvers provided by third party, or developed by yourself. In other words, you may use VisualFEA for creating a finite element model (preprocessing) and visualizing the analysis results ( postprocessing), and use other solvers for processing. Such a finite element processor is termed here as "External solver." There are two paths for doing finite element analysis with VisualFEA: one is relying only on VisualFEA through the whole procedures, and the other combining an external solver for processing and VisualFEA for pre- and postprocessing.

<Alternative procedures of FEA using VisualFEA>

The procedure of finite element analysis based only on VisualFEA is simpler, more straight forward and more efficient than that based on the combined usage of VisualFEA and an external solver. However, the solver embedded in VisualFEA may not cover the range of problem you want to solve. In such acircumstance , you should employ an external solver. It is your responsibility to make data interface between VisualFEA and external solvers, unless there exists software interfacing them. The data interface is described in Chapter 10.