The intention of this booklet is a brief but general introduction into the treatment of the Finite Element Method (FEM). The FEM has become the leading method in computeroriented mechanics, so that many scienti?c brancheshavegrownup besides overthelastdecades. Nevertheless,theFEM today is a question of economy. On the one hand its industrial application is forced to reduce product development costs and time, on the other hand a large number of commercial FEM codes and a still growing number of software for e?ective pre and postprocessors are available in the meantime. Due to that, today it is a quite challenging task to operate with all these di?erent tools at the same time and to understand all handling and so- tion techniques developed over the last years. So, we want to help in getting a deeper insight into the main interfaces between the customers of the FEM and the codes itself by providing a totally open structured FEcode based on Matlab, which is a very powerful tool in operating with matrix based formulations. That idea and conditions forced us some years ago to initiateDAEdalon as a tool for general FE developments in research appli- tions. In spite of still existing high sophisticated mostly commercial FE codes, the success and the acceptance of such a structured tool justify that decision afterwards more and more.

A Quick Start into DAEdalon.- Fundamentals of Solid (Continuum) Mechanics.- Constitutive Behavior.- FEM Implementation within Matlab.- Applications and Examples.- What Does DAEdalon Mean ? Background for Computational System and Greek Mythology.