Hi all,
The company I work for only uses excell to do calculations. For most simple calculations Excel works fine and for calculations that have to be repeated a lot of times Excel works great once you really get to know all it's possibilitys. As a mechanical engineer, having to name units in seperate cells, transform every time you go from kilo to Mega and having to doublecheck everything because excell wouldn't know what a Newton is gets quite annoying though. Also excel's disability to plot graphs (without first having to explain what dots it should be connecting) is a quite tiresome. Because of all this a lot of my colleagues I'm trying to figure out what would be the best software we could be using.
Wishlist
I'm basically looking for a program that (in order of importance):
[ul]
[li]Can be used algebraricly (define quantities, define formula(s), get answer for unknown quantity/quantities[/li]
[li]Understands (metric) units[/li]
[li]Works fast (requires a minimum amount of mouse usage)[/li]
[li]Is able to plot graphs of functions[/li]
[li]Works intuitively[/li]
[/ul]
MathCad
I have some experience with a very early MathCad version (2001i) and I've tested MathCad prime 1.0 for a short while. In general I really like the way units can easily be converted and calculated with. In 2001i I especially liked that (once I knew what keys to use) I could really work fast and keep on typing formulas. Whilst I really liked the speed in which it could be used, the thing I really missed in 2001i was a bit of intuitive design and ease of use. When I used Prime 1.0 in my opinion they really tried to copy the microsoft way of interacting with the software in stead of making it as intuitive as advertised. Yes it looks good but working with quantity for example names I found to be really really timeconsuming. When I wanted to enter a single quantity or a several quantitys into an equation like F[sub]1[/sub]=10*N in 2001i I only had to type"F.1[spacebar]:10N" if my memory is correct. With mathcad prime I had to do something like type "F", select subscript with mouse, type "1", deselect subscript with mouse and so on. If there is an easyer way it surely feels like the developers tried really hard to hide it from me... Does anyone know if Prime 2.0 has improved on this? Perhaps we should be using a later pre-prime version like 15? We don't really need the full power of this program, but I really like it's approach.
Mathematica
I've seen some demonstrations of Wolfram Alpha's mathematica and this looks quite promising. Then again, so did mathcad Prime 1.0 untill I started using it. Perhaps this could be a good alternative?
Other programs?
Are there other programs that I haven't heard of and we could be using in stead?
At the moment I'm guessing MathCad 15 would be our best option. I'd like to hear others experiences first though.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Since I'm not a native speaker I'd appreciate feedback on my (British) English
The company I work for only uses excell to do calculations. For most simple calculations Excel works fine and for calculations that have to be repeated a lot of times Excel works great once you really get to know all it's possibilitys. As a mechanical engineer, having to name units in seperate cells, transform every time you go from kilo to Mega and having to doublecheck everything because excell wouldn't know what a Newton is gets quite annoying though. Also excel's disability to plot graphs (without first having to explain what dots it should be connecting) is a quite tiresome. Because of all this a lot of my colleagues I'm trying to figure out what would be the best software we could be using.
Wishlist
I'm basically looking for a program that (in order of importance):
[ul]
[li]Can be used algebraricly (define quantities, define formula(s), get answer for unknown quantity/quantities[/li]
[li]Understands (metric) units[/li]
[li]Works fast (requires a minimum amount of mouse usage)[/li]
[li]Is able to plot graphs of functions[/li]
[li]Works intuitively[/li]
[/ul]
MathCad
I have some experience with a very early MathCad version (2001i) and I've tested MathCad prime 1.0 for a short while. In general I really like the way units can easily be converted and calculated with. In 2001i I especially liked that (once I knew what keys to use) I could really work fast and keep on typing formulas. Whilst I really liked the speed in which it could be used, the thing I really missed in 2001i was a bit of intuitive design and ease of use. When I used Prime 1.0 in my opinion they really tried to copy the microsoft way of interacting with the software in stead of making it as intuitive as advertised. Yes it looks good but working with quantity for example names I found to be really really timeconsuming. When I wanted to enter a single quantity or a several quantitys into an equation like F[sub]1[/sub]=10*N in 2001i I only had to type"F.1[spacebar]:10N" if my memory is correct. With mathcad prime I had to do something like type "F", select subscript with mouse, type "1", deselect subscript with mouse and so on. If there is an easyer way it surely feels like the developers tried really hard to hide it from me... Does anyone know if Prime 2.0 has improved on this? Perhaps we should be using a later pre-prime version like 15? We don't really need the full power of this program, but I really like it's approach.
Mathematica
I've seen some demonstrations of Wolfram Alpha's mathematica and this looks quite promising. Then again, so did mathcad Prime 1.0 untill I started using it. Perhaps this could be a good alternative?
Other programs?
Are there other programs that I haven't heard of and we could be using in stead?
At the moment I'm guessing MathCad 15 would be our best option. I'd like to hear others experiences first though.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Since I'm not a native speaker I'd appreciate feedback on my (British) English
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