FeatureBuilt · in the lab
Solid FEM
Mesh a part, pick fixed faces and loads in the 3D view, and solve stress, displacement, reactions and natural frequencies with the CadCraft finite element library.
Use this add-on:
Screenshots and a short video come with the listing (AL.3).
Overview
Mesh a PartCraft part with quadratic tetrahedra, set a material, fixed faces and loads by picking faces in the 3D view, and solve a linear static or natural-frequency study with the CadCraft finite element library. Displacement, von Mises stress, support reactions and frequencies are drawn on the model in colour bands, with a warning list. It is a separate add-on with its own panel: PartCraft's own Simulation solver is not changed.
Who it’s for
- Machine designers who want a quick stress and deflection check of a part while they model it.
- Engineers who want to see the support reactions balance the loads and read the warnings before they trust a number.
- Anyone who wants natural frequencies of a part with fixed faces.
What you can do
- Pick fixed faces, forces (total newtons spread over faces), pressures and gravity by clicking faces in the 3D view; every pick is one undo step and the settings are saved with the part.
- Choose steel, stainless, aluminium, titanium or ABS (typical values) or type E, Poisson ratio, density and yield stress.
- Mesh with PartCraft's own tetrahedral mesher and solve on a Web Worker.
- Read the largest displacement and von Mises stress, the reactions beside the applied load, and the natural frequencies.
- Draw von Mises, displacement or a mode shape on the part or beside it, with an adjustable deformation scale and a legend.
Methods and standards
Ten-node tetrahedron (Zienkiewicz and Taylor, The Finite Element Method, ch. 9), 27-point integration, preconditioned conjugate gradients with an incomplete Cholesky factor, subspace iteration for frequencies. Face loads use a six-node triangle with the Dunavant degree-4 rule. Stress is evaluated at each element's nodes and the stress tensors are averaged at shared nodes; the unsmoothed largest value is reported beside it.
Data and sources
Material presets are typical room-temperature values (ASM data sheets as published on MatWeb for A36 steel, 304 stainless, 6061-T6 aluminium and Ti-6Al-4V; MatWeb's overview for ABS); a real design uses the supplier's certified data.
Verification
tools/fem/test-solid.mjs (33 checks): a cantilever against Timoshenko beam theory, self weight, a uniaxial patch test on a distorted mesh (exact to 1e-14), Lame's thick-walled cylinder, mesh refinement and the first bending frequency against Euler-Bernoulli. tools/fem/test-solid-partcraft.mjs (21 checks) solves the same mesh with PartCraft's own solver: displacements agree to 5e-3 percent or better and von Mises to 0.2 percent; the differences are printed. The add-on's panel logic passes 25 checks and the real /lab/partcraft page passes tools/addons-test/browser-fem-solid.mjs. Not compared with any other program.
Limits
Linear elastic, small displacements, isotropic materials; no contact, yielding, buckling, heat or flow. One material per part. Stress at fixed faces, load points and sharp corners depends on the mesh. The page solves up to 5,000 elements; larger models are for a workstation. PartCraft only for now (ModelCraft, CadCraft and SuperCad Studio hosts are not built; SuperCad Studio shows the panel of a mounted PartCraft). Not a code check; your engineer reviews the results.
Files and formats
Nothing is exported. The settings are stored in the part file (part.studies, key fem-solid) and the plot as display bodies; neither changes the part's solid.
Get started
- Add Solid FEM in Settings > Add-ons.
- Open a part, open the Solid FEM tab, add fixed faces and a load by clicking faces.
- Press Mesh the part, then Solve, then Show on the model.
Languages
The text is available in:
- Afrikaans (af)
- Amharic (am)
- Arabic (ar)
- Azerbaijani (az)
- Belarusian (be)
- Bulgarian (bg)
- Bengali (bn)
- Bosnian (bs)
- Catalan (ca)
- Czech (cs)
- Danish (da)
- German (de)
- Dhivehi (dv)
- Greek (el)
- English (en)
- Spanish (Spain) (es-ES)
- Spanish (Mexico) (es-MX)
- Estonian (et)
- Persian (fa)
- Finnish (fi)
- Filipino (fil)
- French (fr)
- Galician (gl)
- Guarani (gn)
- Hebrew (he)
- Hindi (hi)
- Croatian (hr)
- Hungarian (hu)
- Armenian (hy)
- Indonesian (id)
- Icelandic (is)
- Italian (it)
- Japanese (ja)
- Georgian (ka)
- Kazakh (kk)
- Khmer (km)
- Korean (ko)
- Kyrgyz (ky)
- Lao (lo)
- Lithuanian (lt)
Works in
| Edition | Works | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Browser (/use) (yours) | Added on demand | Fetched the first time you use it, then kept for offline use. |
| Studio from getcadcraft.com | Added on demand | Fetched the first time you use it, then kept for offline use. |
| Microsoft Store | Added on demand | Fetched the first time you use it, then kept for offline use. |
| Google Play | Added on demand | Fetched the first time you use it, then kept for offline use. |
| iPad and iPhone (App Store) | Included; switch it on | Part of the reviewed app; your list switches it on. |
| Custom build | Added on demand | Fetched the first time you use it, then kept for offline use. |
Comes with
- Frames and FEA 1.5 MB
Adding it brings these too. Engines are shared: each downloads once for every add-on that uses it.
Permissions
- Adds a panel section
- Adds commands
From its manifest. Shown again when an update changes them, and the update waits for your yes.
Versions
| Version | Channel | Date | What changed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.9.0 | stable | November 9, 2026 | Signed and published. |
Licence and maker
CadCraft (CadCraft, first-party). Licence: Apache-2.0. Dependencies carry their own licences, listed on their pages.