ANSYS Packaging Thermal/Mechanical Calculator (APTMC) is an interface program developed for use with ANSYS and specially designed to handle thermal and thermally induced stress modeling/simulation of Level 1 and Level 2 VLSI packaging structures and assemblies. APTMC is written in PASCAL and operates in an interactive I/O format mode. This user-friendly tool leads an analyst/designer through the process of creating appropriate thermal and thermally induced stress models and other operations necessary to run ANSYS. It includes such steps as the following: (1) construction of ANSYS commands through the string process; (2) creation of a dynamic data structure which expands and contracts during program execution based on the data storage requirements of the program sets to control model generation; (3) access of material data and model parameters from the developed INTERNAL DATABANK which contains: (a) material data list; (b) heat transfer modes; and (c) library of structures; (4) forming ANSYS PREP7 and POSTn command files. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.)