Abstract: A computer-aided design system in which a mechanical quantity of a structure can be determined from stored geometrical representation of the structure, the material properties thereof and the loads imposed thereon, comprising: generating data describing a structure as a mesh; generating by application of the finite element method to the mesh, the elements of a stiffness matrix, a loading vector, and a vector including an associated degree of freedom index for each row and column of the stiffness matrix, generating from the stiffness matrix and the loading vector elements of matrix A and a right hand-side vector f, where A and f are related through the relation Ax=f, the vector x representing a mechanical quantity at a plurality of points of the mesh; and a linear solver of the preconditioned conjugate gradient type for generating, for subsequent processing or display, the elements of the vector x from A and f using a preconditioning matrix, the system being characterised in that the linear solver comprises ge

Abstract: In a computer aided design system, a stored geometrical representation of a structure, the material properties thereof, and the loads imposed thereon are converted into a visualization of a mechanical quantity of the structure. A mesh is generated that describes the structure. By application of the finite element method to the mesh, the elements of a stiffness matrix, a loading vector and a vector including an associated degree of freedom index for each row and column of the stiffness matrix is generated. From the stiffness matrix and the loading vector, a matrix A and a right-hand side vector f are generated. A and f are related through the equation Ax=f, wherein the vector x represents the mechanical quantity at points of the mesh. A linear solver of the preconditioned conjugate gradient-type generates the elements of the vector x from A and f using a preconditioning matrix K.