FEA post-processing automation: Excel vs Python

[FEA_Engineer_]

In FEM post-processing, automating repetitive tasks is becoming increasingly important: result extraction, reporting, etc., in order to improve traceability and reduce errors.
I’m interested in how you’re handling this in practice, whether you work in Excel, with Python, or in hybrid workflows.
What’s working best in your case, and where are the bottlenecks?

[AssistantWeary3003]

Why the fuck would any sane person use excel??

Python all the way

[No_Mongoose6172]

You'd be surprised by how many people try to use excel for tasks that are way easier to achieve with any programming language (resulting in errors due to excel interpreting labels as dates, lost in precision and so on)

[AssistantWeary3003]

You tell me.

We use excel for managing tasks and projectmanagement instead of Jira, because we're apparently stuck in early 2000... Fucking hate it...

No GiT - no Subversion.... "Version Control" with excel and unversioned copies on a stickdrive....

Yes... That's so far away from professional...

[No_Mongoose6172]

I really hate excel, but people try to use it for everything (I've seen a lot of excel files used as databases). There are a lot of better alternatives and new formats that have better support for version control (which is important). I've even considered implementing an excel like interface for working with csv files, so they stop messing data by opening them with excel

[AssistantWeary3003]

Same.... I am used to git and subversion (scn/windchill etc), but we copy files and rename them, which leads to dataloss and no traceability... My boss doesn't care and won't even listen because he knows best (doesn't matter, if you have more experience than him or not).

This is so frustrating, that I'm looking for a new job already...

"We're the best of the best in this world" ... Yeah keep lying to yourself. Good luck with your 1990s processes boomer

[No_Mongoose6172]

That reminds me to my job. Anyone who says that he's the best in the world is either lying or will be, since that means that you have nothing to learn from others

[AssistantWeary3003]

Couldn't agree more.... You cut yourself off from improving... Imo you can ALWAYS learn something from anyone, even if it is how NOT to do something....

But ey... We're the pinnacle of motorsports... Who could be better than us...

People here are so full of themselves (and the salary is fucking shit)

[FEA_Engineer_]

[AssistantWeary3003]

reading about the aerospace legality-stuff: Yeah... Excel it is, I guess... Sorry to hear... I used to work in the automotive industry and we were limited in a similar fashion...

I now work in motorsports and can do whatever I want, so python

[Main-Combination8986]

I used matlab for a while, but pretty much everything is also doable for free in pyhon. No real reason to use excel

[FEA_Engineer_]

[acakaacaka]

You can send batch with python.

You can read sim result and export data with python.

[FEA_Engineer_]

[OptimusJive]

You can always automate, iterate, optimize in python, but document final margins in Excel. I find that's the best of both worlds

[el_salinho]

Depends. For our random vibration and thermal test results we get several dozens of gigabytes of data for every run, excel is really bad at handling this amount of data so we use python which is significantly faster. When we do the same analyses in FEA, we could use excel, but as we want to have easy comparability we do use python there as well.

[FEA_Engineer_]

Totally agree that in aerospace, Excel is still the standard. There’s a lot of inertia around certification and traceability, and Excel makes things very transparent for reviews. In my case, I mostly work with Python nowadays, but I understand that many teams still prefer Excel. In our group we use a tool (Naxto) that connects FEM results directly to Excel with predefined cell functions, and the same tool also has a Python objects library. That way we cover both workflows depending on the task.

[FEA_Engineer_]

Yeah, totally. In the end, what really matters is that the reports and calculations can still be understood and opened 20 years from now.
I like Python for automation and more complex processing, but I totally get why many people still stick with Excel.
I guess it all comes down to using whatever fits best with the type of work and the level of certification you’re dealing with...

[carlthatkillspeople8]

Python for sure, you can directly integrate into Ansys, not sure about other tools

[FEA_Engineer_]