I do not like the idea of some generated set names are ESET and others are ZESET. That would be confusing. Maybe you give your own names such that they come out in front?

And I still think a good solution could be to add a feature like

NO RESULTS FOR SETS ESET_*_GRP_*

Or create an Abaqus/CAE script to
DELETE ALL SETS ESET_*_GRP_*

Need to check Abaqus to see how this could be done.

There is a very good reason for this (as always ;) ).

In pyFormex we do not just have sets of elements like in Abaqus: we have groups and sets, and these are two orthogonal classifications of the elements.
This reflects the fact that pyFormex is not just intended as a Finite Element Mesh preprocessor, but rather as a general Geometry Modeler.

Element GROUPs are used to split the mesh in objects of the same plexitude, so that we can use single arrays for the geometry in a group.

Element SETs are used to split up the mesh in parts with the same (physical, not geometrical) properties. pyFormex sets are
not to be confused with Abaqus sets (though often coincident).

Thus you can e.g. have a group with triangles and a group with quads. But some triangles and some quads may be made of steel, while other triangles and quads are made of wood.

In Abaqus you will need 4 sets:
- steel triangles
- wooden triangles
- steel quads
- wooden quads

That is why pyFormex HAS to split up elements according to
groups * sets when exporting to Abaqus.

pyFormex also creates the accumulated sets according to groups and (pyFormex) sets. Depending on the case, the user may not be interested in the results for the split set, but rather in the agglomerate parts: e.g. results in the steel part, results in the quads, results in the loaded elements, ...

The sensible default is to generate all agglomerate sets, but that can be switched off. But you can not replace the individual set names by an agglomerate name, like you suggest. That would e.g. break the group_by_group feature.

Note also that defining a lot of extra sets is not a performance hit for Abaqus. So it is best to leave the feature in. The user can always disregard/delete extraneous sets from Abaqus CAE if he wishes (All the internally generated element sets start with 'ESET_'.) Or he can set res/out requests producing only results for the sets that he wants.

The only thing that could be left out is the user specified set name at the end of the generated names. Look at the following code:

for p in self.prop.getProp('e'):
    ...
    setname = esetName(p)
    ...
    for i,elnrs,els in zip(range(len(gl)),gl,elems):
    ...
        grpname = Eset('grp',i,setname)
        subsetname = Eset(p.nr,'grp',i,setname)

We have a double loop, so the generated name should reflect 'p' (the property record) and 'i' (the group number).
setname is the name for the set p, grpname is the name for the group i, subsetname is the name for p*i. The subsetname will be 'ESET_p.nr_GRP_i_setname', where setname and p.nr both refer to the same property record. We want to keep the ESET_p.nr for consistency and easy recognition as a generated name.
The final setname could be left out, but I guess I put it in to help the user in correlating the generated set name with his provided set name.