Hi,<br><br>I am thinking about decoupling the shape of a Field from the number of components of a Variable.<br><br>The current state of affairs is that the field shape defines the components of related variables, but in reality the FE base is always scalar, applied to each component of a vector variable separately. This is in contrast with truely vector FE spaces like the edge elements used for the Maxwell equations.<br><br>To fix that I propose:<br><br>1. For scalar FE approximations the field shape will ve 1 - this is for all examples we have.<br><br>2. Variable syntax will be changed to allow for the number of components.<br><br>Apart from the clean-up reasons, it will be IMHO easier to implement the edge elements then.<br><br>Opinions/ideas?<br><br>r.<br><br>