In the present work, the operation of a 6-pulse three-phase rectifier supplying a powerful DC consumer is simulated using the finite element method (FEM). The purpose of the simulations is to research the generation of harmonics from the rectifier circuit and to investigate their influence on the transformer supplying the three-phase bridge rectifier. For this purpose, two co-simulations were made. The first of them is realized with the help of the professional Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software - Ansys Electromagnetic Suite. The voltage-driven model of the rectifier transformer for FEA was built and was used in the Ansys Twin Builder software simulation. The resulting current harmonics from the FFT analysis of the current waves with their amplitudes and phases are input into the primary and secondary windings of the transformer current-driven model in the second electromagnetic-thermal co-simulation in Ansys Workbench to calculate the losses in the transformer. These losses are used in the thermal model to account for transformer heating from higher harmonics.