Continue to Site

Eng-Tips is the largest engineering community on the Internet

Intelligent Work Forums for Engineering Professionals

Register Log in
  • Congratulations waross on being selected by the Eng-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

MathCAD Prime Express 4.0

Status
Not open for further replies.
Worldtraveller

Worldtraveller

Aerospace
Sep 25, 2013
82
I have still been using MathCAD 12 (I think, very old version that works just fine).

So far my initial impression is unfavorable, but I don't know how much of that is due to Express' limitations. Also, this is my first time trying Prime, so some of these issues may have been around since they changed to the MathCAD prime format.

1. Is there a way to change the interface to 'Classic MathCAD' (auto detect text or equations, use the '.' for subscripts, etc.). If I have to learn all new keystroke shortcuts, I may as well use MS equation editor and do the calculations by hand.

I'd like to keep this thread open for future questions/discussion if possible.

 
Replies continue below

Recommended for you

Sort by date Sort by votes
While that sounds more efficient, you are subsidizing your company's business with your own money/assets. Whenever you buy yourself your next new laptop, will you be buying it for yourself, or for your job? This question depends on if you're a full-time employee or a contract employee, of course.

STF
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
It's peanuts in the scheme of things, in my opinion. In another thread people are claiming to routinely work 10 hours a week of unpaid overtime. That's a top of the range laptop every 2 weeks!

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
True enough, there are some very generous employees out there.

Greg Locock said:
FWIW Mathcad 5+ won't run on W7, but will run in the XP emulator box on W7.
Click to expand...

You reminded me, for the first time in YEARS that I once set up a virtual machine on my home computer for EXACTLY that purpose.
Tonight I fired it up, clicked on Mathcad 5+, and wow - it still works :)
Jeez now you got me going, and it's rainy tonight, I'll have to have a DosBox session and play some space invaders.


STF
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
My mathcad 2000 pro works on Win 7 pro.

Dik
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I agree that it's a bit of a subsidy... but, it eliminates my own frustration with inferior hardware... well worth the lack of aggravation. To make matters worse, the IT department charges $5 for each hour of billable time. I can copy a CAD file to USB stick and view it on my laptop using Bricscad faster than I can load it in the Autodesk viewer. Using my laptop is a no-brainer.

Dik
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Prime 4.0 won't copy/paste into Word. Glad I got the free version first. I guess I'll be uninstalling this from my machine. Now to go find a feedback form in case they care. :)
I still use my old version on my own machine, but this new version is like learning a completely different software and it just doesn't seem worth it.

 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Upvote 0 Downvote
On the plus side, SMath works just like the 'old' version of MathCAD, so thanks again for that tip. I had never heard of that software before.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
It's been around for a LONG time, but the author is located in Russia, I think, since my company blocks the URL based on country. So, if you're in a DoD aerospace company, there might be an issue with getting SMath approved.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
SMath equations copy into word as images, which is at least easy to deal with.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
What changed? Back in the old days of Mathcad 5, circa 2002, I was able to paste directly into MS Word, and the calculations were still ALIVE. Meaning I could edit them and subsequent numbers in the Word document would update themselves. Graphs were clunky, but that functionality was fantastic.

STF
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
IRS: Nope...don't know about Word... use LibreOffice at home.

Eng-Tips_gof0kn.png


The attached was a page of an 8 page calc in SMath. It was copied and pasted into LibreOffice and printed using DoroPDF as a printer driver. The *.pdf was converted to *.png using Paint.Net, and the *.png file was loaded to the forum.

Dik
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I also really like the number of decimal places and trailing zeros feature of SMath... noted in the above 'cut and paste'... For projects, I use SMath calcs and print them to doroPDF printer, in append mode, and it creates a neat, good looking, set of design notes. I didn't realise you could cut and paste notes into LibreOffice until mentioned above. I can convert the *.pdf into *.png using paint.net and post them into the forum.

Dik
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Worldtraveller said:
I have still been using MathCAD 12 (I think, very old version that works just fine).
Click to expand...

That, or maybe Mathcad 13 was the last of the MathCADS before PTC took over... My Mathcad 2000 seems to work fine, but, am using it less and less.

Dik
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
PTC screwed up the symbolic solver in Mathcad 14. Mathcad 13 had the last decent symbolic solver but not quite as good as Mathematica. I doubt PTC has fixed the symbolic math solver.. I now use Mathematica for symbolic solutions.
I also use Mathcad to fit equations to data. My record is 15 variables for a non-linear differential equation. Mathcad 13 does a decent jobs but sometimes Mathcad13 exits too soon before the minimum ( optimum ) solution is found.
I am starting to use Python for simulations and fitting data to equations but Python is slow relative to Mathcad13.

smath looks good but I wonder if it has a minerr or optimize function like Mathcad, Scilab or Python.

Peter Nachtwey
Delta Computer Systems
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Somewhere along the way, Mathsoft and Maple's symbolic engine parted ways and they went to muPad; so not broken, per se. My impression is that muPad just isn't as capable as Maple was.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

271828
  • Locked
  • Question
Mathcad Prime - subscript . and unit font 1
2
Replies
22
Views
534
samirhayatkhan
samirhayatkhan
yuriy_biks
  • Locked
  • Question
"This value must be a scalar" issue in the FOR loop Mathcad Prime 9 1
Replies
12
Views
320
3DDave
3DDave
julian89
  • Locked
  • Question
Trilinear interpolation in mathcad prime?
Replies
3
Views
209
bkal
bkal
Ali_003
  • Locked
  • Question
Plotting Fixed Moment Diagram in PTC Mathcad Prime 7
Replies
4
Views
104
Ali_003
Ali_003
WARose
  • Locked
  • Question
Copying from MathCAD to Word
Replies
14
Views
504
dik
dik

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top Bottom