FEA is carried out using a number of elements in a 1D, 2D or 3D environment. Data from CAD systems can be imported directly into the FEA package or alternatively the model can be created within the FEA environment. On most occasions it is necessary to simplify the model so as to reduce the amount of calculations processed by the workstation, however, with modern powerful workstations, more complex models are able to be analysed.

Different element types are used to represent the structure, for example a large steel framework may be represented by simple nodes and beams whereas a complex surfaced model be auto-meshed with tetrahedral or quadrilateral (polygon with four sides) elements.