PAT 2.1 - Design Alternatives from spreadsheet or text file?

edit

I am just beginning to use PAT 2.1 and am interested in doing large-scale analyses, and I am wondering if there is a way to define Design Alternatives for the PAT outside of the PAT interface. On the Design Alternatives pane of the PAT, I anticipate having a large number of alternatives and rather than clicking through the interface to set up the different options I was hoping to use something like Excel to set up the design alternatives and export that setup to a format that the PAT can use to perform the simulations. Is this something that's available already or could someone point me to any clues for how to achieve this? Thanks!