When I entered the workforce almost 20 years ago, the graphical user interface (GUI) was already
common good in engineering. Recently I’ve come to the realization that I’m very dependent on my (3D)
computer mouse, or the track-pad for that matter. GUI’s and mice (or is it mouses) go hand in hand and
have improved tremendously the way we interact with computers. But that advantage also comes with a
disadvantage: is it very hard to automate GUI’s.
Luckily I had some great teachers who did remember the times without GUI’s. I’m talking about you Eric
and Kris. The first finite element analysis (FEA) software packages were solver only packages (late 60’s).
GUI’s only came years later (early 80’s). Engineers would have to enter the input for these solvers in a
text editor! Nowadays it’s hard to imagine that someone would enter a geometry and mesh manually in a
text file. And that’s the reason why GUI’s were developed and are now indispensable. But performing an
(FEA) analysis is much more than creating a geometry with a mesh, it’s also loads & boundary
conditions, load combinations, post-processing and reporting. It is for these steps that I believe the GUI is
not the best way and that the old-school text editor is still a much better tool, which explains the title “the
lost art in engineering.”
Let me get it tangible with a simple example: the excel file with an entire list of loads and load
combinations, which are then created one by one by clicking the “create load” button in the GUI and
manually entering the values. . . Just like we get shivers from thinking about the idea of defining an FEA model in a text editor, Eric and
Kris got the same shivers thinking about creating loads through the GUI.
So my appeal to all engineers out there: embrace the lost art of scripting (where possible), so you can
focus on the task at hand: engineer the products of tomorrow.