The app has two workspaces, Model Prep and FEA Lab, and the Design Explorer, which opens in its own window. It also includes engineering tools that an AI agent or a script can drive (see “Agent and command-line tools” below).

These descriptions say what the app offers. They do not claim that every command, imported file, solver setting or combination has passed release testing. The checks this package did pass are listed under “Verification evidence”.

Model Prep

Model Prep is the CAD workspace. It has four documents:

• Part: 2D and 3D sketches, where a 2D sketch can import DXF and export DXF or SVG; features such as extrude, revolve, sweep, loft, fillet, chamfer, shell, draft, hole, linear and circular patterns and mirror; surfaces; datums; sheet metal with flanges and flat patterns; weldments with cut lists; mould and plastic-part checks.

• Assembly: components, mates, exploded views, a bill of materials and interference checks.

• Drawing: sheets with views, section views, dimensions, notes, balloons and hole tables. Sheets export as PDF and DXF.

• Table: parameters, parameter bindings and configurations.

Parts export as STEP (AP203, AP214 or AP242), IGES, STL, OBJ, OFF, 3MF, PLY and GLB. STEP export keeps each body’s colour. A sheet-metal flat pattern exports as DXF. Continue to FEA Lab carries the part into a study and keeps its material.

Model Prep can also plan CAM toolpaths for facing, pocketing, profile contours, drilling and turning, and preview them against the stock. It writes no machine code (G-code), and no toolpath has been verified for machining (see “What this version does not do”).

A CAD model that can be displayed or edited is not automatically a valid solid or an analysis-ready domain. Unsupported geometry and unavailable commands must be resolved before an analysis is attempted.

FEA Lab

FEA Lab is the finite element workspace: study setup, solving and review of results. Every study is solved on this Mac.

Analysis types

• Linear static: deflection, stress and strain under steady loads, with named load cases. It assumes small deflections and a linear elastic material.

• Nonlinear static (large displacement): equilibrium on the deformed shape, reached by applying the load in steps. The material is elastic only (St Venant–Kirchhoff). It runs on the CPU in double precision or with its main work on the GPU.

• Modal: undamped natural frequencies and mode shapes, 1 to 128 modes, with mass participation, a two-mesh convergence comparison and an estimate of the response to base excitation at a damping ratio you choose. It runs on the GPU.

• Linear buckling: critical load factors and buckling mode shapes for a linear elastic part under the study’s loads, solved on the GPU. Each result is checked again in double precision. Mode shapes are drawn at an arbitrary scale.

Geometry and grid

• Every study runs on a regular grid of 8-node cube elements (HEXA8), lined up with the X, Y and Z axes. You choose the element size.

• In linear static studies, Local refinement (off unless you turn it on) splits cubes into smaller ones at the part’s bores, fillets and thin walls, measured from its CAD surface, and then where the estimated error is largest. It can also merge quiet regions into larger cubes and leave out empty space. It stops once compliance and the peak change less than the amount you choose, and the result says whether the refined or the regular grid answered.

• Parts come from Model Prep, or from files: STL, OBJ, PLY, OFF and VTK meshes (you state the length unit); 3MF, glTF/GLB, AMF, Rhino 3DM and IGES solids (the file states the unit); and STEP files under AP203, AP214 or AP242. A file over 64 MiB is refused. A file the app cannot read correctly is refused, and the study is left unchanged.

• Several bodies, including a STEP assembly, can be analysed only after you confirm that they are welded into one body, with no contact between them.

Material, units, supports and loads

• One isotropic, linear elastic material per study: Young’s modulus, Poisson’s ratio, density and, for a factor of safety, yield strength.

• Units: SI (m, N, Pa); mm, N, MPa; or in, lbf, ksi.

• Supports: Fixed, Roller / Frictionless, Symmetry, Cylindrical / Pin-like and Custom. Each direction can be free, fixed or, in linear static studies only, given a prescribed displacement.

• Loads: total force, force per element, face pressure, gravity and a moment applied as a couple of equal and opposite forces.

• Supports and loads can be placed on faces of the grid box, inside boxes or on named selections, using named Cartesian or cylindrical coordinate systems.

Results and exports

• Displacement, stress components and invariants, support reactions and moments, strain energy and the equilibrium check, each shown with the record of the solve that produced it.

• Section forces on internal grid-aligned planes, values along a path, a 1× / 2× / 4× mesh convergence sequence at a probe point, and 2× or 4× local refinement of an internal region (linear static only).

• Batch studies: one model solved for a range of load sizes, a set of materials, or every combination.

• Export: a Markdown report, CSV tables, PNG images, and GIF, MP4 (H.264) or MOV (ProRes) animations.

Design Explorer

The Design Explorer works on the part open in Model Prep. You choose which of its dimensions, fillet radii, hole diameters, shell thicknesses, pattern counts and feature suppressions may change, and within what ranges, and state goals and limits. It then solves every design it tries with the app’s finite element engine on this Mac and compares the results.

• A finalist is solved again on finer grids before it is reported as verified. A result that does not settle as the grid is refined is reported as unresolved, not passed.

• Only a verified design can be exported from the Design Explorer, as STEP, STL or OBJ, with the verification verdict written beside the file. Any solved design can be reopened in Model Prep, marked unverified unless it is verified.

• Its solves use the regular grid of cube elements described above. A study set up in the Design Explorer uses one catalogue material and supports and loads on named faces; a brief written with the agent tools can be imported instead.

Agent and command-line tools

The app includes lattiform-mcp, a Model Context Protocol server for AI agents, and lattiformctl, a command-line tool, both inside the app bundle. This version publishes 109 tools (tool schema 199). An agent can:

• create, open, edit, save and export Model Prep documents, including drawings, without opening a window;

• propose edits to a document open in the app, which take effect only when adopted and can be undone. A proposed edit larger than 4 MiB is refused;

• set up, check and solve FEA studies, including batch studies and mesh convergence, and read their results;

• write a design brief, run Design Explorer studies and compare the results.

Some agent options reach beyond what FEA Lab’s own controls offer: plasticity in a nonlinear static study, a frictionless or frictional rigid surface that a face rests on, and a coarse flow preview through the part. None of these has published verification evidence. The flow preview runs a fixed number of steps and has no convergence criterion, so it is a record, not a flow analysis.