[en] Finite element analysis (FEA) method was employed to perform three-dimensional (3D) electric field simulations for gas detectors with multiple wire electrodes. A new element refinement method developed for use in conjunction with the FEA program ANSYS allows successful meshing of the wires without physically inputting the wires in the chamber geometry. First, we demonstrate a model with only one wire, for which we calculate the potential distributions on the central plane and the end-cap region. The results are compared to the calculations obtained using GARFIELD, a two-dimensional program that uses the nearly exact boundary element method. Then we extend the method to same model, but with seven wires. Our results suggest that the new method can be applied easily to the 3D electric field calculations for complicated gas detectors with many wires and complicated geometry such as multiwire proportional chambers and time projection chambers.