To control the thermal behavior of machine tools, numerous measures are used today. With the help of thermal machine models, well-founded predictions can be made for the selection and design of these measures. For creation and simulation of thermo-elastic models of structural components and a high effort is still necessary. In the paper, a procedure is presented to reduce this effort. A combination of existing methods and new approaches is used. This includes methods of mathematical model order reduction to reduce computing costs and robust mesh algorithms that process even slightly defective geometries.