Things you love/hate with mathcad 1

[weikequ]

Hey guys, I'm a structural turned software engineer and I'm building a mathcad-ish alternative (primarily due to the lack of care and innovation PTC's shown for the software). I'm really curious about the things you love or hate about the software. Maybe PTC can also see this thread and then I can go back to just using mathcad lol. For me:

Awesome
- handling units
- displaying/typing math in a really natural way

Not awesome
- lack of integration points with my other tools
- no sketches
- PTC hasn't done anything really great to improve the software in like 10+ years

 

[JoelTXCive]

I was a happy Smath user until late 2024. Our IT department said we were no longer allowed to use Russian based software programs, so we had to switch away from Smath.

We looked at several computational software packages, but elected to go with MathCAD. (We do work in Florida, and FDOT has calculation sheets in MathCAD)

Things that drive me crazy about MathCAD.......

1) There is no "Autocomplete" or "Intellisense" - You have to retype your variables over and over again. Smath (which was Free) and all other software packages I'm aware of remember your variables. Once you declare a variable, you only need to type the first few letters before the software Autocompletes the variable. This is a huge timesaver when working with large files and lots of variables.

2) Text Alignment - In Smath you can highlight several rows of text or calculations and select "Align Horizontally" or "Align Vertically." Again, this is a huge timesaver on large files when you need to get the calculations visually looking good. In MathCAD you have to go line by line and attempt to snap them to a grid. It's tedious and annoying.

It blows my mind that PTC has not added these features to their program........