Question How big a finite element model can the SDT handle ?
Answer The real limit is linked to the fact that MATLAB uses 32 bit addressing so that a single matrix can't be bigger than 2 GB. Matrices that are most likely to go above this limit are the element matrix dictionnaries and the factored stiffness matrices.
Translating 2 GB into a number of degrees of freedom is not possible. In practice you can handle a couple 100,000 DOFs with a large computer. But often innefficient use of SWAP by MATLAB makes computation impractical, before they actually get to be impossible.
Note that handling large models requires to take precautions about not duplicating matrices, ... The SDT is very flexible but if you want to strain the resources of your computed you should be careful.
