Hydrostatic bearings are widely used in precision machines due to their high motion guide accuracy, low friction and high load carrying capacity. It is very useful to estimate the moving characteristics of hydrostatic bearings in the design stage. A new method is suggested for the analysis of fluid film in hydrostatic bearings. A combined mesh of 8 node solid elements with negligible deformation resistance and spring-dashpot elements is used in conjunction with the user subroutine of ABAQUS to represent the fluid film. The mesh can be used to capture the deformation of the bearing structure as well as the varying properties of fluid film. Analysis results from the finite element model are compared with theoretical solutions, results from FLUENT analysis and some previous works. With this method, static and dynamic analyses of the system containing the bearings can be performed efficiently.