Welcome to the course! By the time you finish this course you’ll have your own finite element solver for 2D solid structures and a workflow that allows you to model and analyse plane stress and plane strain structures.  

In this short introduction section I'll give you a brief roadmap for the course and give you a sense of what to expect and when. 

I'll also briefly comment on assumed prerequisite knowledge - in other words what you should have covered before taking this course, and also what you don't necessarily need to know.