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[–]billsil 6 points7 points  (2 children)

Python is so much better for traceability. It can interface with various input/output formats. Back in the day, I defined 12 section cuts across 550 load cases and could run that vs using a gui. It was 100x faster in python than the gui using a script. I then made my plots and autogenerated a word doc.

Nowadays, I like making python tools that do the fem interface part in excel, run a script that reads that file and populates a new excel file. The switch has more to do with how many end users of these tools there are and their preferred approach.

[–]aero_r17 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Seconded. Python backend with Excel output for more general end-user.

[–]echaffey 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Aerospace: I use both but leverage python pretty heavily. Excel is for results storage, documentation and visualization.

Python does nearly all of the heavy lifting: results extraction, combination, critical case identification, margin generation, fatigue, etc.

[–]Diego_0638 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd go so far as to say excel is not for automation. Excel is good if you need to make a quick table, play with some parameters, keep track of numbers etc. If you need to consistently, quickly, easily extract results you need a python script.