Musculoskeletal Research Laboratories

Overview

PreView border=0 alt=PreView src=http://mrl.sci.utah.edu/images/stories/previewlg.jpg

PreView is a Finite Element (FE) preprocessor that has been designed specifically to set up FE problems for FEBio. It allows the user to specify the boundary conditions and material properties in a user-friendly graphical environment.

PreView offers the user the ability to create simple geometry literally by the click of a mouse button. Simple primitives such as boxes, cylinders and spheres can be created this way. Several mesh editing tools are available and can be used to customize the geometry. More complicated models can be imported from several different file formats (e.g., Nike3D, Amira Hypermesh ).

PreView offers several several tools to set up the boundary conditions, which is often the most difficult part of setting up an FE problem. Time varying nodal displacements, nodal forces, pressure forces, rigid body kinematics can all be set up in a user-friendly way. More complex boundary conditions such as rigid interfaces and sliding interfaces for contact problems can be defined easily.

Materials can be defined using the Material Editor which offers a convenient overview of the available materials and properties in the problem. PreView allows you to choose from a wide range of non-linear materials including isotropic hyperelastic (e.g. Mooney-Rivlin, Veronda Westmann), transversely isotropic, poro-elastic and rigid body.

After the user has defined the FE problem, he can export it to a few different file formats, such as FEBio or Nike3D.

Download

PreView Download Files

Download files are zipped and include the executable file, documentation and examples. The Release version is the stable version. The Development version contains the latest feature additions.