Toolbars contain button shortcuts for commonly used menu commands. Figure 1.8 shows the end result of defining the finite element model. The problem domain has been discretized into finite elements, material properties have been assigned to elements and boundary conditions have been applied. After this is complete, the problem is ready to be solved. Pressing the Start button begins the computations.
Information is displayed in the large list box area during the computations.
At any time the computations can be stopped or the iteration can be halted to be restarted later. In addition, a graph of the iteration convergence can be displayed by pressing the Graph button. The results may be presented as contours, graphs, tables of values, velocity vectors, flow paths, flux values, and a series of phreatic surface lines in the case of a transient analysis. Data review is accomplished using commands on the View and Draw menus, shown in Figures 1.10 and 1.11, respectively. The View menu contains commands oriented towards selecting time increments and element regions to view, and viewing numerical node and element information.