5/24/2014 ANSYS Tutorial: Workbench and Excel - EDR&Medeso

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ANSYS Tutorial: Workbench and Excel
Microsoft Excel is probably the most popular calculation tool in engineering world. Therefore it is not strange
that ANSYS Workbench can be connected to Excel. Even from early versions. The connection is
strengthened in the latest release 13.0, and now Excel can be utilized in (at least) three different ways with
Workbench:
Export model information
Parametric study
Drive Workbench
5/24/2014 ANSYS Tutorial: Workbench and Excel - EDR&Medeso
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This blog article is a summary of these three ways.
Export model information
Most Workbench users know that we can post-process results in Excel. Here, results mean almost all items
we can insert under the Solution branch: contour results, tables, charts, etc. The only exception is command
snippet. We can insert Commands under Solution but we cannot connect what we do in Commands to Excel
directly. By clicking on Export in the right-click menu we export tabular data Excel in which we can prepare
these data further easily.
Fewer seem to know that we can export even model information to Excel. In fact, as long as the model
information in question can be listed in a Workbench Worksheet, it can be exported to Excel. Examples of
such are Geometry, Connection, Mesh, Analysis Settings, etc. However, a few tricks have to be applied in
order to do so. If we directly right-click on the item we want to export for example Geometry, there is no
Export option:
To make it appear, we have to click on Worksheet first:
5/24/2014 ANSYS Tutorial: Workbench and Excel - EDR&Medeso
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And now it is available:
As usual we can export in either txt or xls format. In most of cases xls format is more convenient to handle.
Parametric study
In Release 13.0 a new component Microsoft Office Excel is added to Workbench environment:
With this component Microsoft Office Excel 2007 or 2010 (no earlier version) can be used as a calculator in
Workbench. This feature exposes Excel ranges as input and output parameters to ANSYS Workbench
which can be used to create Design Points and Design Exploration studies. Eric Miller from PADT gave a
very detailed description on how to set up connection between Workbench and Excel. Here is his article.
As my personal opinion this function is specially designed for those ANSYS users who are not very familiar
with ANSYS internal scripting language; APDL. It is redundant if we know how to utilize APDL inside
Workbench. Here are defenses to my opinion.
First, Workbench can only transfer scalar parameters to/from Excel by this approach. Excel is extremely
powerful to handle tabular data, but concerning scalar data APDL is at least as good as Excel. We can create
and run macro in Excel, but once again, for scalar data macro cannot utilize its muscles.
Second, instead of the Excel connection we can insert a command snippet under Solution and name
parameters we want to run parameter study with prefix my_. These parameters with prefix my_ will be
5/24/2014 ANSYS Tutorial: Workbench and Excel - EDR&Medeso
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detected and listed in Parameter Manager. We can create Design Points and run Design Exploration studies
as usual using these parameters. The prefix my_ is merely the Workbench default and we can be changed.
Drive Workbench
Some years ago, when it was still the age of Workbench 1.0 (or ANSYS V11), there was a users forum
inside ANSYS Customer Portal in which ANSYS developers answered users questions directly or issued
some tips. One day someone from ANSYS (unfortunately I forgot who he was) published a small program
(or an Excel macro file) which allowed users to drive Workbench from Excel. I was surprised that we could
run Workbench in this way and supposed that it would be included as a fully implemented feature in
Workbench in next release. However ANSYS mentioned nothing about it with release 12. Maybe there were
too many news when Workbench 2.0 was unveiled. However, ANSYS officially included this feature from
V13.0.
Here are explanations on how it works. Workbench native applications, the project page, Engineering Data,
DesignXplorer, and the Parameter Manager, speak python which is a very common scripting language.
Python works well with Microsoft Excel. Therefore it opens up possibilities to connect Excel with one of
Workbench native applications. Obviously, the Parameter Manager is the first choice above all.
As I understand, the most important application for the feature is to extend applicability of Workbench to
those who have less or no FEA experience. For most design engineers, they are familiar with the product
structures and design processes but less experienced in analysis and FEA simulations. Their designs are
usually quite similar during a development process. Hence, at the beginning a professional calculation engineer
can do a case study to define the model such as mesh and boundary conditions, as well as identifying critical
input parameter and controlling output parameters. Thereafter an extremely simple and user-friendly interface
can be set up in Excel, which includes only some boxes for input and output parameters. The design engineers
only need to input the required parameter and launch the Workbench simulation efficiently and accurately in
background. When the simulation is completed, output parameters will be presented in the same Excel file.
Based on these output parameters design engineers can improve their design.
In Help there is a simple example: Workbench // Scripting Guide // Using Scripting in ANSYS Workbench
// Usage Examples // Updating a Workbench Project and Parameters from Excel. Eric Miller from
PADT presents another example in here.
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