AbstractThis article presents two new methods for adaptive refinement of a B‐spline finite element solution within an integrated mechanically based computer aided engineering system. The proposed techniques for adaptively refining a B‐spline finite element solution are a local variant of np‐refinement and a local variant of h‐refinement. The key component in the np‐refinement is the linear co‐ordinate transformation introduced into the refined element. The transformation is constructed in such a way that the transformed nodal configuration of the refined element is identical to the nodal configuration of the neighbour elements. Therefore, the assembly proceeds as with classic finite elements, while the solution approximation conforms exactly along the inter‐element boundaries. For the h‐refinement, this transformation is introduced into a construction that merges the super element from the finite element world with the hierarchical B‐spline representation from the computational geometry. In the scope of developing sculptured surfaces, the proposed approach supports C0 as well as the Hermite B‐spline C1 continuous shapes. For sculptured solids, C0 continuity only is considered in this article. The feasibility of the proposed methods in the scope of the geometric design is demonstrated by several examples of creating sculptured surfaces and volumetric solids. Numerical performance of the methods is demonstrated for a test case of the two‐dimensional Poisson equation. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.