A person who uses software for the analysis of constructions and who is interested in the stress and strain state is not required to know all mathematical and computational problems in detail. However he needs to have an idea about how mathematical problems are formed and what are the numerical methods to solve them. It is hard to rationally choose an analytical model and correctly evaluate the accuracy of the final results.
L.A. Rosin. Problems of the theory of elasticity and numerical methods, St. Petersburg, State Technical University, 1998, p.5
This section provides some short information on the approaches and methods used by SCAD for the numerical analysis. The amount of this information is sufficient for the user to better understand further instructions of this manual and to deal with situations that arise as one tries to solve a particular engineering problem. This manual cannot replace the literature on the subject referenced in the text, but it can serve as an introductory guide to these books. Moreover, the considered issues are covered more extensively in the book [11] which can be used as additional documentation for SCAD.