The detailed geometry of large components or structures is often too complex to analyse with current computer technology. Even if it is not, there is usually a requirement for rapid analysis of a highly idealised model to explore alternative designs. There are two generic techniques for model idealisation. In Detail Suppression, small geometric details present in the geometric model are ignored or suppressed in the analysis model. In Dimensional Reduction, the analysis model makes use of reduced dimension elements, such as beams, plates and shells.

In the work to be described here operations have been defined and implemented which allow the user to suppress details and to reduce the dimensionality of geometric models. It will also be shown that the Medial Axis Transform is useful in the automatic derivation of appropriate idealisations.

The resulting model must still provide results of known accuracy, so some preliminary attempts to estimate the "modelling error" arising from idealisation will be discussed.

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