The paper examines the force density method for form finding, and it is presented a generalization that uses the exact expressions of the equilibrium derived from the equation of the catenary. The method allows to obtain an exact configuration that may be used as a starting point for subsequent incremental non linear analyses.
In the paper it is shown that the use of the exact equilibrium conditions leads to a form finding method that is very similar to the FDM, but yields significant differences in the initial form when the weight of the cables is not negligible. A dimensionless parameter is introduced as degree of freedom of the form.