Abstract: The recent transition from meshing the whole model to the independent meshing of the assembly parts introduced new challenges in the task of visualizing and pre-processing the finite-element meshes. One part of our work is the visualization and removal of mesh penetrations and perforations, a frequently encountered problem when assembly parts are meshed independently. Furthermore, we focus on the visualization and the interactive definition of mesh-independent connections between car components represented by finite-element meshes. We present methods to automatize the flange recognition, as connections are usually placed along flanges. There are basically three types of connections to visualize and edit: point links, line links and surface links.