This paper describes hexahedral mesh generation for various shell structures, such as automobile bodies, plastic injection mold components and sheet metal parts by using chordal surfaces. After generaling one-layered tetrahedral mesh by an advancing front algorithm, the chordal surfaces are constructed by cutting of tetrahedral elements. Since the choral surfaces are composed of tri/quad elements with poor quality, they are transformed into quadrilateral elements with good quality. Hexahedral elements are then generated by offsetting these quadrilateral elements. The boundary nodes of hexahedral elements are generated on the outer surfaces of the original shell structures. Sample models including nonuniform thickness have been tested to validate the proposed algorithm.