Reliability or Routine? An Analysis of Approaches to Choosing Engineering Calculation Software

Choosing software for design and engineering calculations is no longer a technical task — it's a strategic business decision. It determines not only your team's speed but also your projects' reliability, your company's reputation, and your ability to adapt to new challenges, such as artificial intelligence.

As an engineer who has journeyed from academic research to international project practice and finally to developing my own software, I've seen this dilemma from every angle. Every day, managers ask the same questions: How do we guarantee accuracy when deadlines are tight? How do we build a system that doesn't depend on one "irreplaceable" person? How do we turn engineering knowledge into a company asset instead of letting it walk out the door with an employee?

Let's candidly break down three distinct philosophies in engineering calculation approaches and see where each one truly leads.

Approach 1
Calculations in Excel: The Risks of Fragmented Automation

Does this picture seem familiar? The calculation lives in one Excel file, the drawing in another, and the explanatory report in a third. Data is copied manually, screenshots are pasted into the report, and the entire system relies on the engineer's diligence and memory.

It's a familiar path and, at first glance, a free one. But in reality, your company pays for it every day. And the price is far higher than the cost of any license.

Let's be honest: perfect people don't exist, especially under stress. And the Excel environment doesn't just allow for mistakes — it provokes them. The lack of unit control, hidden logic in formulas, and accidental typos all create the conditions for a "perfect storm."

Engineering calculations in spreadsheets

1. The Hidden Risk: A Pandemic of Errors

These aren't just my words. Authoritative audits by KPMG show that up to 91% of complex spreadsheets contain serious errors. Make no mistake: this is not a theoretical threat! The story of the NHS Lothian children's hospital construction delay and losses of nearly £28 million due to an error in a spreadsheet with ventilation criteria is a real-world case. Every such file is a ticking time bomb in your project.

The question isn't if it will explode, but when.

2. The Invisible Tax: The Lost Time of Your Best People

Research by PTC demonstrates that engineers spend 15% to 25 % of their time not on solving complex problems, but on mechanical work: transferring data, manual checks, and updating reports. And this happens after every single change. This means that for up to 2 hours of an 8-hour workday, your qualified engineer is not designing, not creatively seeking better technical solutions, but doing tasks a computer should be doing. This is the "invisible tax" you pay for sticking to routine.

This "tax" is a direct result of using tools for the wrong purpose. Let me be clear: spreadsheets are wonderful, reliable, professional software. But they were created for a different class of tasks. Using them in engineering is an unfortunate mismatch that began when there were no other programs closer to the physics of our work. But today, we have those tools!

I recently came across an article by Yogi Schulz, "Engineers are World Leaders in Misusing Excel", where he aptly noted that engineers top the list of users who apply Excel in ways it was never designed for.

The problem, as Schulz points out, is that we try to turn Excel into something it is not:

• A full-fledged software application (it lacks robust multi-user access, security, and data validation);
• A database (it cannot efficiently handle large volumes of information or manage relationships);
• Or a programming language (its logic is opaque and "hard-coded" in cells).

The story of this misuse is almost always the same: a talented engineer creates a simple, elegant spreadsheet to solve a specific problem. It works, it's useful, and gradually it becomes overgrown with new sheets, formulas, macros, and links to other files. Over time, this life-saving file turns into a cumbersome, fragile "monster" that only its creator can understand. And this "monster" is at the heart of the next strategic trap.

A variety of engineering tools

3. The Strategic Trap: A Business Reliant on People, Not Systems

When the logic of a calculation is understood only by its author, the company becomes critically dependent.

What happens if that person gets sick, resigns, or simply goes on vacation? Yes, the project grinds to a halt. Such a calculation cannot be passed to a colleague for review or to a new employee to continue the work.

You've probably heard colleagues say something like, "It's easier for me to do it all from scratch — I can't figure out or trust what others have done." This shouldn't happen in an efficient organization. If every new engineer has to completely rebuild the knowledge base and tailor the workflow to their own style, the losses are inevitable. This creates a fragile business model where knowledge is personal, not corporate.

It's a path that makes scaling and building a resilient company impossible.

Approach 2
Heavy Artillery: The Redundant Power and True Cost of Specialized CAE/FEA Systems

Understanding the limitations of Excel, many companies swing to the other extreme — powerful, specialized analysis packages (Ansys, ETABS, SCAD, etc.).

I agree: for complex, including nonlinear and dynamic analyses, they are indispensable. But is it justified to use them for absolutely every engineering task, without distinction?

1. The 80/20 Problem: Using a Cannon to Swat a Fly

Let's be realistic: the vast majority of daily engineering tasks (calculating a beam, column, or simple foundation) do not require the power of a "monstrous" CAE package. Using it for this is like hammering nails with a microscope. It's inefficient, slow, and expensive.

2. Isolation and Bottlenecks

Even in the most modern software, calculation results often exist in isolation. They still need to be manually transferred to a report, often as static screenshots. This breaks the digital chain and brings us back to the risks of manual work. Furthermore, reliance on a few highly specialized experts creates a critical bottleneck in the company, slowing down all processes.

3. The True Price: Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

The cost is far more than just the license sticker price. The true price, or Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), includes powerful hardware, annual technical support, and most importantly — a highly-paid specialist who knows how to work with this complex tool.

To understand the scale of this investment, let's look at the numbers. In the Western market (USA, Western Europe), where most research is based, the annual cost of a single specialized workstation can easily reach $250,000 to $352,000. The lion's share here isn't the software cost, but the fully-loaded cost of the specialist engineer for the company, including high salaries, taxes, and overhead.

While these figures reflect top-tier markets, the business lesson is universal. Even in regions with more moderate engineering salaries, the core TCO components remain. The specialist's total cost is still often the largest expense, and critically, the high price of global software licenses does not scale down with local wages.

And here lies the key business takeaway. In many markets, the annual license fee can equal or even exceed a local engineer's yearly salary. It's a colossal investment that might be justified for unique R&D tasks but is absolutely excessive and economically unjustifiable for the vast majority of routine calculations.

Analytical formulas in PTC Mathcad

Approach 3
The Integrated Approach: Reliable Automation of Engineering Calculations in Dystlab TechEditor

There is a third way, one that doesn't force us to choose between the risky simplicity of spreadsheets and the excessive complexity of finite element analysis packages.

It's an approach where calculations, analysis, and documentation live in a single, interactive environment. This is the philosophy we at Dystlab have embodied in TechEditor.

Example of an engineering report in TechEditor

1. Responsibility Built into the System

TechEditor combines the intuitiveness of a text editor with a mathematical engine that automatically controls units of measurement and makes the calculation logic completely transparent.

This isn't just a convenience. It's a built-in quality control mechanism that gives a manager confidence in the reliability of the results. What's more, this transparency allows a manager to instantly verify key calculation steps without getting lost in a maze of cells. It also makes it safe to delegate calculation work to junior engineers, as the system protects them from many common errors, and their work can be easily checked at any stage.

2. True, Not Imitated, Automation

Forget manual updates.

You create "live" documents where results, tables, and conclusions update automatically whenever any input parameter changes. This is the true automation that gives engineers back that 15 ... 25 % of their time previously spent on routine tasks. And it allows them to do what you actually pay them for — innovating and finding optimal solutions.

Moreover, thanks to integration with programming languages (Python, Pascal), you can create deep automation, linking TechEditor with other CAD systems or databases, finally breaking down the "islands" of disconnected information.

And for the particularly demanding, TechEditor offers its own integrated development environment. With this Pro tool, your design departments can create their own mini-apps (TechEditor applications) with a window interface to perform specialized tasks.

Example of an application for calculating LVL beams

3. Creating Corporate Intelligence

When the calculation and its documentation are inseparable, every file becomes a verified, reusable corporate asset. It's easy to understand, check, and hand over to another specialist. This solves the "irreplaceable people" problem and allows the company to accumulate and systematize knowledge, building a solid foundation for growth.

4. Integrated FEA: Analysis Without Disrupting the Workflow

In the previous approach, we outlined the limits beyond which it becomes impractical for a design company to venture. So what do you do if analytical formulas in your report are not enough, and the finite element method is called out to be used?

Analytical engineering calculations in TechEditor

We anticipated this situation and added a lightweight, FEM-based engine to TechEditor. It's not as powerful as those in full-fledged CAE packages, but it allows you to quickly and conveniently calculate forces, stresses, and deformations in 2D and 3D frame systems.

Unlike in most CAE software, the entire simulation process (from model creation to analysis) is described in TechEditor using special commands that are part of the overall physics and math engine. This creates a tight and efficient automation link, as the user can describe the entire process parametrically.

How it works: an example of combining formula analytics with FEA

For example, let's define a beam height as h=200 mm. Based on this parameter, we can calculate geometric properties (area, moment of inertia) and pass them analytically to the finite element model. After the analysis, this same height is used in design code check formulas. The same variable is used at all stages! At any moment (say, when the section's strength is insufficient), we just need to change the base value of h and review the final check. And if we control the variable with a slider, our report turns into an interactive document with powerful optimization capabilities!

Script functions for finite element analysis of structures in TechEditor

5. A Safe Bridge to the Future with AI

Artificial intelligence is an incredibly powerful tool. But its probabilistic nature (a "black box") is a huge risk for engineering, where deterministic accuracy is required. Our answer is the only responsible strategy: a "verifier-in-the-loop."

Here's how it works: AI acts as the engineer's fast assistant, generating a calculation methodology, proposing an algorithm, and structuring the canvas of your future report. But the final, legally significant calculation is always performed and verified by TechEditor's reliable mathematical engine. This allows you to leverage the revolutionary speed and "intelligence" of neural networks without risking safety and your professional reputation.

Learn more about how AI integration works in TechEditor 5 >>

6. A Smart Investment, Not a Massive Expense

Our approach changes the very economics of engineering software by eliminating financial risks for companies. We offer a powerful free version of TechEditor that even allows for small commercial projects. This is your chance to get to know the program in practice, evaluate its benefits on real tasks, and confirm its effectiveness before making a purchase.

And when your team is ready to scale, you'll find that the cost of a PRO subscription is significantly more affordable than other tools on the market. This allows you to get a full suite of professional tools, priority support, and advanced automation capabilities at a reasonable price. It's a flexible model that lets you start for free, eliminate all financial risks, and grow with us — investing in development, not in redundant functionality.

Choosing engineering calculation software as part of your company's strategy

Ultimately, the choice between Excel, CAE, and an integrated environment is a choice of the strategy your company will operate by.

You can stick to the familiar path, the "classic approach." As engineers, we know that behind this routine lie not just inconveniences, but systemic risks and fragile processes. Here, responsibility rests not on the system, but on the attentiveness of one person.

You can bet on "heavy artillery." But this often means building work around a few "irreplaceable" experts, creating bottlenecks that will slow down the entire team. Is it worth investing in such power that is excessive for most tasks?

The integrated environment we offer at Dystlab is not just a third option. It is our conscious choice in favor of a fundamentally different way of working. It's a strategy that allows you to build a company where:

• Reliability is a property of the system, not the result of one engineer's heroic efforts;
• Knowledge becomes a shared, protected asset, not a personal secret that leaves the company with an employee;
• The time of your best specialists is freed from routine for what holds true value — finding perfect and innovative solutions.

My team and I created TechEditor precisely because we personally felt the "pain" of chaotic spreadsheets and excessive complexity. That's why, in my opinion, investing in an integrated environment is not just a software update. It's a fundamental step in building an engineering business ready for the challenges of the future.