Let's say you wanted to do a special purpose switching power supply. Digikey doesn't have a column for gate capacitance (for the mosfet), or Q (for the inductor). All that manual work to read datasheets is terrible, especially if your design takes a little while to perfect and some of the components go end-of-life, so you have to replace them.
I personally like to graph the cost-efficiency curve so I actually have to tabulate lots of mosfets, inductors, and caps, then simulate them in a spreadsheet.
I know about the specialized design tools done by each manufacturer that will recommend parts and do a design for you based on your criteria. I want something that does a much broader search for parts though.
Maybe I should write one. :)