1. A method for defining finite elements in a surface for ultimately predicting a physical characteristic of the surface, which method comprises: providing a computer system having a computer connected to an input device, to an image display screen and to a storage file, the storage file including instructions and data for at least steps (iii) through (xi) of said method; (i) inputting, through the input device, surface boundary point coordinates of a geometric model of a surface; (ii) displaying a surface object on the image display screen, the surface object consisting of the geometric model of the surface; (iii) preparing boundary edges of the surface object by generating piecewise geometrically smooth bezier curves between boundary points and converting the bezier curves to cubic interpolation polynomials and defining evenly spaced points on each cubic interpolation polynomial; (iv) decomposing the surface object with divider curves, if the surface object is not already 3, 4, or 5 sided, into 3, 4, and 5 sided primitives; (v) determining a largest acceptable element size; (vi) determining a number of elements disposed along each edge of each primitive; and (vii) readjusting one of the divider curves to match closest even element vertices; (viii) mapping in 3 and 5 sided clusters; (ix) preparing remaining 4 sided primitives for decomposition into 4 sided elements; (x) mapping in elements and element patches to develop a mesh from the surface object; (xi) optimizing the elements in the mesh; and (xii) writing the mesh having the optimized elements to the storage file.