Elementarium public beta: finite element analysis in a browser tab

Elementarium is open to everyone as a public beta. It is a finite element workspace for structural engineers that runs in a browser tab: you model, solve, check and report in one place, on the machine in front of you, with nothing to install.

This post is about why it is built that way, and where it is going.

Why it runs in a browser

Structural engineering is no longer done at one desk. Models travel between architects, detailers and reviewers, and a design is often checked in another office, sometimes another country.

Most analysis software still assumes one workstation, an installer, a licence server, a dongle, a module per material, and a file that lives on one disk. Documents and design tools have long since become live and shared; structural analysis mostly has not.

The browser is a serious computer now

WebAssembly runs compiled code at close to native speed, and threads and vector instructions let it use the whole processor. Elementarium's solver is a finite element core written in C++ and compiled to WebAssembly. When you press solve, it runs on your own CPU.

Nothing is uploaded, nothing waits in a queue behind someone else's job, and no seat is checked out. Three consequences:

• Speed you can iterate with. A portal frame solves in milliseconds, so changing a section and solving again is a habit, not an errand.
• Privacy by construction. Solving transmits nothing. Your model leaves your machine only to sync and share, and only when you are signed in.
• It works where you are. A project you have opened keeps modeling, solving and reporting without a connection.

The trade is that you are bounded by your own hardware rather than a rented cluster. For frames and floor plates of everyday size, a current laptop is enough.

Every number should be able to defend itself

A structural result is worth exactly as much as your ability to defend it to the person who reviews it.

Every utilisation names the clause it came from, the combination that governs it and the position along the member where it does. The calculation report carries the hand calculation with real numbers substituted, so a reviewer can follow it line by line. Each element's formulation, its assumptions and its limits are written down, along with the sign conventions behind every diagram.

The solver is held to the same standard: every element type is checked against closed-form solutions before anything merges. That is our floor, not your evidence. The verification guide shows how to check the tool yourself, on a case whose answer you already know.

One element for every surface

Slabs, walls, cores, rafts and shells all run on the same four-node MITC4 element, bending and membrane action together. It is free of transverse shear locking as it gets thin, so a 200 mm floor and a 1.2 m raft use the same formulation — no thin-or-thick choice to get wrong, no reduced integration, no hourglass factor for somebody to tune. The mesher produces quadrilaterals throughout, including at the opening corners and re-entrant notches where a weaker element would do the most harm.

A model is a shared document

Once the model lives in a browser, it can behave like everything else that does. Several people edit the same model at once, and work done offline merges when you reconnect.

Open by default

Elementarium reads and writes SAF, the interchange format SCIA, RFEM and others speak, and keeps its own project file lossless.

The same goes for the price. There is a free plan with no card and no trial clock, and one subscription with everything in it, cancellable in any month. No module per material, and no quote that needs a director's signature. The pricing page is the whole story.

Where it goes from here

Concrete design to EN 1992-1-1 is next, followed by EN 1993-1-1 §6.3 member buckling, section cuts and design strips through slabs, material and contact nonlinearity, a scripting API, and further design codes and national annexes. What engineers ask for decides the order, and the release notes record what has shipped.

The quickest way to judge it: open one of the worked examples in the real editor. Then build something of your own, and tell me where it falls short — [email protected] reaches the person who writes the solver.