The need for computer aided engineering in the analysis of machines and mechanisms led to a wide variety of general purpose programs for the dynamical analysis of multibody systems. The use of more lightweight structures and an increasing demand of high-precision mechanisms, such as robots, led to the incorporation of flexible bodies in this methodology. This paper presents a formalism for flexible multibody systems based on a minimum set of generalized coordinates and symbolic computation. A standardized object oriented data model is used for the time-invariant system matrices describing the elastodynamic behaviour of the flexible bodies. Consequently, the equations of motion are derived in a form independent of the chosen modelling technique for the elastic bodies. They are generated in a symbolic form using the symbolic formalismNEWEUL and the computer algebra systemMAPLE. Two examples, a rotating beam and a flexible robot, are presented in this paper in order to demonstrate the formalism.