If you haven't tried one of these symbolic equation editors you will (or may be) gobsmacked when you see one in action.
If I'm building a long derivation (eg solving a 2dof or 3dof spring mass damper system) in Excel I use Mathcad to build the function up and simplify it, and then search and replace the variable names with cell references, and paste that into Excel.
Cheers
Greg Locock
Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.
I too was late to the game when it came to these computer algebra programs. I had known about Mathcad for years but each time I decided to go ahead and buy it I found it had gone up in price considerably. It is now about $1200. My son uses Mathcad and has produced some great looking homework assignments for grad school. Mathcad seems to be considered the easiest to use of this type of program, but is not quite at the level of the three best known of this group which are Mathematica, Maple, and Matlab. My own personal experience is only with CalculationCenter a lite version of Mathematica, so I can't give you first hand advice.
But the following is what I have read. Mathematica and Maple are similar programs in that they are capable of PhD level research, and Matlab is used more by engineers because of its powerful matrix math capabilities. Mathematica is probably a little more sophisticated than Maple, but Maple may be a little easier to use. If you do a Google search you will find many varying opinions.
You can also search the eng-tips site. Do a keyword search for Maple etc. I have been in several of these discussions.
So finally I bought CalculationCenter mostly because of its price and because I wasn't sure I would like it. And at first I didn't like it. These programs are a very different way of doing things when you are familiar with spreadsheets and conventional programming. But when I got started I became fascinated with this program. Most of my programming now is done with CalcCenter (its new name) and not too much with BASIC, although BASIC is clearly better for some tasks. My only complaint is the utilitarian look of the output which sometimes is not very attractive.
Maple is and excellent program, I use it regulary to simplify long expressions, solve system of equations, and some calculus. I use specifically for symbolic math, not sure how well it works for numerics, for that I use MATLab. There is a program that is very similar to Maple called XMaxima. It is free under the GPL. The user interface is not as nice as Maples, but as far as functionality there is no difference. Here is the web site.
