What engineering/math features is Excel missing?

[Gareth Hayter]

Hi All

Background
I'm nearing the end of development of an Excel add-in (commercial) which adds new engineering and math features to Excel. I'd like to have a discussion with engineers that use Excel on a daily basis to ensure that the product adds true value and meets their needs and desires by quickly incorporating their feedback and suggestions into the product and essentially giving them the chance to direct the development of the product.

My question is: Where is the correct place/forum to have this type of discussion as I don't want to break any forum rules? (I'm trying to be absolutely clear about my intentions)

I won't mention the product/website/features until I have been permitted, as I don't want to be accused of spamming or promoting a commercial product.

Thanks for your time and help,
Gareth Hayter.

 

[Gareth Hayter]

Fred...

Thank-you (and all the other kind members) for your feedback. As I mentioned at the start, an early preview (beta) version is available for testing purposes. It's fairly rough around the edges, but good enough for kicking the tyres.

As I mentioned, it will be a commercial product, however at this stage it is usable for free. It does prompt you to get a trial license or a full license, however this is not necessary and if you just close the form you'll be able to continue to use it. The licensing is in place as it too needs to be tested!

The equation features are implemented (apart from live equations while editing a formula).

The plotting is implemented although needs tweaks, such as being able to specify logarithmic X-axis and general improving the look and feel.

The Word Writer is early in the development stages, but works.

I'll begin adding the 'units' features over the next week or so.

Some other ideas and thoughts that have mentioned here will be implemented over the next few weeks. It's all about trying to get the prioritization correct!

Again, thank-you all very much.

If anyone wants to try, please let me know about any issues/suggestions etc:
(ugly!) website: FormulaDesk Math

I'm very happy for this discussion to continue - it's very enlightening seeing so many different opinions and thoughts and insightful ideas.

Kind regards,
Gareth.

 

[IDS]

fel3 - You can do polynomial and other curve fitting with Linest. See for example:

https://newtonexcelbach.com/2015/06...ar-curve-fitting-examples-hints-and-warnings/

You can do unit aware calculations in Excel through VBA (or links to Python or other), although outside the USA it's really not that big a deal anyway.



Doug Jenkins
Interactive Design Services

http://newtonexcelbach.wordpress.com/

 

[Denial]

fel3

The site given in Doug's 00:54 post should answer your 23:56 question more clearly and comprehensively than anything I could cobble together.

 

[Gareth Hayter]

For those interested, I've added an early (unfinished) version of the unit-checker. It handles formulas with basic arithmetic where the units of the formula cell and referenced cells are specified in the cell to the right of each value cell. It doesn't yet take into account the CONVERT function or other formulas. That will come in due course.

If you try it out, please let me know of any issues or suggestions. More to come...

Gareth.

 

[dik]

...and a printer driver that does *.pdf and overwrites or appends printouts.

I often do calcs using Excel or SMath and use DoroPDF printer for output. My final file can have drawings, Excel, SMath, Libreoffice writer, etc. documents appended to each other and my design notes can be a *.pdf file with 100 pages... also can output my TI Nspire calculator calcs to the same file.

Dik

 

[rotw]

In terms of optimization, I would love to see a package for multi-objective optimization (e.g. Pareto-optimal front).
See some reference here:

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.iecr.6b03453

I am personally interested in multi-objective optimization applied to discrete data sets.

Side note: I suppose something which a artificial neural-network could do, this is basically apart from Excel, with the net exploited in reverse mode.