Maple Flow vs SMath or MathCAD 6

[RFreund]

I'm curious if anyone has used Maple Flow, it is relatively new. I'm mostly asking those that use Mathcad or SMath heavily (I think there a few SMather's on here now). Curious to hear how you think it compares (mostly relative to SMath).
Thanks!

 

[Sparweb]

I was feeling a bit cranky yesterday, so I should remove Matlab from my list above. Your point is valid, Greg.

 

[Craig_H]

I went to print off a calculation sheet in SMath yesterday, and *Gasp*

Luckily, I was able to download a previous version (1_0_8253) that does not plant this obscene watermark on the files. Sadly, I question whether SMath is going to go down the same route that so many other packages have.

on the topic of free things disappearing, I've just archived my own copy of the SMath installer and the plugins that I use.

Good idea, doing that right now.

 

[dik]

Thanks for the heads up... Installed an earlier version, too. Fortunately my SMath programs are not sent to clients.

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[phamENG]

Thanks. I would have installed the latest update...glad I read this first!

While I'm not happy about it...good for Andre. A lot of hard work has gone into this, and while I love free stuff I'm glad he's getting something for his work. Life isn't exactly easy in Russia right now, and I would not be surprised if this is driven by a more fundamental need than out of greed. I have another business interest outside of engineering and my business partner and I hired some Russian software developers last year, and I've been getting first hand accounts and it's not good inside. Got really ugly for a while, and then they fled. I doubt it's gotten better...

 

[Lomarandil]

From Andrey:

I just want to add that this small requirement to activate SMath Studio is a huge step to make this software much more powerful in the nearest future.

You just need to activate the program. It is free.
You can use online or offline activation as you wish.
Once it is done you''ll have no any watermarks or other restrictions.

Why? I will try to explain: I've created a company in Russia and we have a brilliant team of 3 programmers (strong in IT, math, physics). We were able to monetize a project and working hard to make our first clients happy (licensing server, courses, planning and features for companies). We are going to finish our current activities in a Month or two and then will start improve SMath Studio itself: new graphs, stable Writer, performance of the numeric/symbolic calculation engines, new files format (modern and stable) and much more - that is what we will do in 2023.

Hope you'll enjoy the results.
I just asking to activate a program for free! Nothing more...

Best regards, Andrey Ivashov.

 

[NorthCivil]

Andrey the russian developer is a godsend for us users of smath. without him, we would still be forking over 5 figure sums regularily to PTC who couldnt give a hoot about what kind of product they're flogging.

That one man was able to create his own program that is on par or even more advanced than a huge software company is impressive. the fact that he gave it away for almost 2 decades is humbling.

Now that the donation function is gone, he is still giving it away for free, but also has pricing options for subscription from as little as $4 per month is more than reasonable.

i'll be honest, if i was a programmer with those kinds of skills, i would be much more commercially aggressive. i'll gladly pay the guy his 4$, I probably use Smath at least %10 of the time i'm working.

 

[RFreund]

Completely agree with NorthCivil.

Also I'm excited to hear that they are planning to do even more.

 

[Craig_H]

Weird, I could have sworn that I created an account and was logged in when I got that watermark.

I have mixed feelings. On one hand, I can't blame the developer for wanting to get compensated for their work. Totally fair, and I have no issues paying reasonable fees for software. I am leery of subscription based programs that I build my business around, as I got burned with Mathcad and made the difficult choice to rebuild everything in SMath. I'm now twice shy and don't want to have the same thing happen again.

I've also seen this go another direction... in my free time I ride bikes and TrailForks was the hub for all trail information. The developer was a small team in the BC lower mainland. It was originally free, and they eventually offered a reasonably priced subscription with the sob story that they had to charge in order to keep offering the services that so many people rely on. I bought it happily knowing that I get full value from it. About a month later, they announced that they had sold to a large US firm, and development of the additional features that were promised immediately stopped. They clearly monetized it for the sole purpose of getting a better price for the company. We can't control what happens next week with any software company, and I think that protecting our own in-house calc sheets is wise.

 

[Adam W]

Has anyone used Python Notebooks with say nbdev + Quarto to produce full pdf reports? Seems like it could show all the math + any programming output + crazy amount of graphing capability. Can output markdown from programming cells which could be included inline. Python has Sympy and a heap of other maths libs etc.

I currently use SMath but I pine for an opensource solution with the ability for the whole community to contribute.

 

[skeletron]

@Adam_W: There is the handcalcs and forallpeople python libraries that do a lot of the inline substitution and units engineers crave to see. I haven't implemented it in my practice just do to sheer time available, but after taking the python course (by the libraries' creator) it'll probably be in the works for 2023. Jupyter Notebooks is real easy to use.

 

[TLHS]

I've done the python stuff a bit, but it really feels like a clunky solution to small one off calculations and things. I have to work a lot harder to tell a narrative with a jupyter notebook.

 

[Brad805]

If you have not looked at Handcalcs for python you might want to take a look. This was developed by an engineer in Canada. Handcalcs

 

[IDS]

Thanks for the Handcalcs links, I hadn't heard of that before.

Browsing Youtube I also found How I use Python in Structural Engineering

From a quick look at those, they both look pretty clunky to me, especially the second one, but I'll have a proper look later.

On the other hand, I find calling Python from Excel very unclunky, and an excellent way to work with units or evaluate formulas entered as text, as well a providing much better ways do matrix analysis etc.

I don't get why no-one seems very interested in that approach.



Doug Jenkins
Interactive Design Services

http://newtonexcelbach.wordpress.com/

 

[Adam W]

If you add python together with quarto in the VSCode extension you can actually automate and export really nice looking reports (pdf, MSWord etc) with tables of contents, figures etc. You get everything that you normally would from a Python Notebook but with better latex output and automatic conversion of the latex output to other formats. You can have functions export whole wordy sections and diagrams / plots / full drawing (including DXF/DWG output by using ezdxf and then rendering them into the report) / math (probably automated with handcalcs + forallpeople).

I haven't got around to it yet but I am definitely looking to use this sometime soon, especially for repetitive but highly parametric reports / calculations.

 

[Sparweb]

On the other hand, I find calling Python from Excel very unclunky, and an excellent way to work with units or evaluate formulas entered as text, as well a providing much better ways do matrix analysis etc. I don't get why no-one seems very interested in that approach.

#1 reason: Locked-down computer workstations at the office.

I can install anything I want on my home PC, but if I want to use it for work, I have to go through the rigamarole of coaxing the IT department to install and marry up more software on my computer, and then commit to maintaining it, if it gains popularity among coworkers. They get exercised about this extra work. Also, when I use it at home, I often try it out as a freebie, but the workplace network installation is probably a paid commercial license. File the requisition with the boss, and justify it...

Smath installs with NO Admin privileges required. Sadly, most of the alternatives require them.
To borrow your words... "I don't get why no-one (developing software applications) seems very interested in that approach (to installing their software)."

 

[271828]

I don't get why no-one seems very interested in that approach.

It looks awesome, so I'm definitely interested. Lack of experience with python is the impediment.

 

[milkshakelake]

On the other hand, I find calling Python from Excel very unclunky, and an excellent way to work with units or evaluate formulas entered as text, as well a providing much better ways do matrix analysis etc.

The learning curve is 100+ hours to do that. I dove into it, but the background knowledge needed is intimidating, and I can't imagine a whole office adopting it. There will inevitably be some people in every office who aren't technologically literate and need something simpler like SMath or Excel. I really wish it was easier. I am very much interested in this approach and still working on it.

 

[IDS]

The learning curve is 100+ hours to do that. I dove into it, but the background knowledge needed is intimidating, and I can't imagine a whole office adopting it. There will inevitably be some people in every office who aren't technologically literate and need something simpler like SMath or Excel. I really wish it was easier. I am very much interested in this approach and still working on it.

Sure, to set up everything from scratch including learning Python takes a lot of work, but the point is once a custom function has been set up it can be used by anybody just like any other Excel function. For instance, creating a unit aware function just entails entering the function as text on the spreadsheet, setting up a table of parameter symbols, values and units, then entering the UDF to evaluate functions with units.

The only thing I haven't worked out how to do well yet is display nicely formatted versions of maths text, but I'm working on that.

I have made progress on that. See:

https://newtonexcelbach.com/2022/11/27/latex-maths-text-in-excel/

for a spreadsheet that will convert functions entered as plain text to Latex and display on the spreadsheet as an image, and optionally evaluate the function for given input values, taking account of units.

Doug Jenkins
Interactive Design Services

http://newtonexcelbach.wordpress.com/

 

[Sparweb]

Everyone,
You are on a treadmill.

Look who just added their input to the treadmill.

https://support.google.com/chrome/t...tting-support-for-windows-7-8-1-in-early-2023

For those who accept this news with fear and desperation, do you receive any comfort if I suggest that a decent firewall+antivirus program (many choices) will do a very good job of securing your computer and (ahem) filling any "holes" in your browser's security? Proceeding with an out-of-date browser may leave gaps but if a superior layer of protection is used overall, is there still much reason to worry?

My splendid rhetoric falls apart when all of the reputable firewall publishers also give up on Windows 7, of course.