Shell finite elements are widely used for the analysis of thin section objects such as sheet metal parts, automobile bodies and et al. due to their computational efficiency. Since many of input data for finite element analysis are given as solid models or triangulated surface models, one should extract midsurface information from these input data initially and then construct shell meshes on the extracted midsurfaces. In this paper, a method of generating shell elements on midsurfaces directly from input models has been proposed, in which midsurface generating process can be omitted. In order to construct shell meshes, the input models should be triangulated on surfaces first, and then tetrahedral elements are generated by using an advancing front method, and finally mid shell surfaces are obtained from tetrahedral meshes. Some examples are given to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method.