What is the main differences between Mathcad prime and Mathcad 5

[salaheldin]

Hello dear colleagues

I am new to Mathcad, I wonder what is the difference between Mathcad prime and Mathcad, I knew about the Express version which is free.
Any further guidance or recommended resources to help me master the program will be welcome.
Thank you.

 

[swertel]

A completely different UI.

That's the main difference. There are some architectural differences behind the scenes which allowed PTC to improve several things like symbolic math, user queues (help tips), error checking, solve blocks, and similar.

Because of the (nearly) complete re-write to MathCAD, not all of the functionality from Legacy has been fully implemented in Prime yet.

--Scott
www.wertel.pro

 

[salaheldin]

Thank you
I actually started learning MathCAD Prime by my self from its help section.. It's really great for new users.
Am i on the right track or it would be better if i go on using MathCAD (not Prime) ?

 

[structSU10]

It depends on the functionality you require. Some of the more advanced math capabilities haven't been incorporated into mathCAD prime yet, but if you don't need them then learning the new UI may be beneficial since PTC will only be updating prime from now on. From what I understand the UI is very different with respect to how certain things are input, so switching back and forth isn't very smooth.

 

[fel3]

I jumped from Mathcad 8.0 Standard (c.1998) to Mathcad Prime 3.0 a little over a year ago. This means that I also jumped to Mathcad 15.0 because MC15 is included free with Prime (it's a separate download, but it uses the same licensing file). This is a good thing because you need MC15 to use the MC-to-Prime file converter. I have used the file converter to successfully convert MC8 files to Prime 3.0 format.

BTW, the main reason I upgraded is that MC8 was not very happy running under 64-bit Windows 7, even in compatibility mode. It was slightly slower than it had been under 32-bit Windows Vista (on a slower computer, no less) and had a tendency to freeze or even crash the computer during a long session. The tipping point was a project I did in 2013 for which I created about 100 pages worth of Mathcad calcs in documents ranging from 4 to 10 pages. After dealing with several freeze or crash episodes per day for about two weeks, I resolved to upgrade to Mathcad Prime as soon as Prime 3.0 was released (which was about 3 months after I finished the project calcs). I had demo'ed Prime 2.0 earlier that year, but it didn't seem finished, hence the wait. Prime 3.0 is the the first version I consider to the truly useful, even though the MC15 fans still snub their noses at Prime.

Prime has not yet caught up to the depth and breadth of Mathcad 15.0, and probably won't until at least Prime 5.0, but for me it doesn't matter. Prime 3.0 does more than my old Mathcad 8.0 Standard, which was sufficient for most of the calculations I need do as a civil engineer. The best tool I gained in making the jump is programming, which Mathcad 8.0 Standard did not do. Prime also has a generally better interface (although I sure wish I could park tool palettes on my screen to save repeated clicks on the ribbon) and produces slightly better looking documents.

The best book (maybe the only book) on Mathcad Prime 3.0 is Brent Maxfield's "Essential PTC Mathcad Prime 3.0"

http://www.amazon.com/Essential-PTC®-Mathcad-Prime®-3-0/dp/012410410X

(I wrote one of the reviews). Also, I have posted a bunch of Prime 3.0 worksheets on the PTC Mathcad website and at least three are of interest to mechanical engineers. Start here (

http://communities.ptc.com/community/mathcad?view=documents)

to see the various categories of documents. Most of my documents are under Civil Engineering, but there are three that I also posted under Mechanical Engineering (Lusk_Darcy Friction Factors_v2.zip, Lusk_Natural Gas Distribution Systems & Service Connections (rev3).zip, and Lusk_Feet Inches & Fractions Calculations.zip). The fastest way to see all of my documents is to jump to my page at

http://communities.ptc.com/people/FredLusk?view=documents.

Good luck with learning and using Mathcad.

Fred Lusk

==========
"Is it the only lesson of history that mankind is unteachable?"
--Winston S. Churchill

 

[IRstuff]

Note also that the "original" Mathcad is dead-ended, i.e., PTC will not be supporting any more updates or releases.

Depending on which specific version of Mathcad you have, the symbolic engine may be different. The original engine was Maple, but the new engine since v12(?) and all versions of Prime is MuPad.

The free version of Prime is quite limited, but can still be useful as a units-aware calculator. But, that would be a large footprint and a slow load, compared to any older version of Mathcad, or even Studyworks.

This

http://www.mathcad.pl/prime/6017_Mathcad_Comparison_TS_EN.pdf

is an older comparison of Mathcad 15 and Prime 1.0, so some of the listed deficiencies in Prime are no longer extant.

I'm not particularly fond of the Prime equation editor, which is claimed to be better. Certain editing features now require more keystrokes than before, which is rarely a good thing. Other features, like automatically inserting a complete parentheses, is better than Mathcad 15. Several of what used to be separate extension packs, like Signal Processing, are directly incorporated into Prime, so that's a lot easier to deal with.

TTFN
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[Erro11]

I have been a MathCAD user since MathCAD 3.0.
The frst thing I did after successfully installing MathCAD 15 M030 and Prime 3.0 was to
symbolically evaluate a large equation that I had trouble processing in MathCAD 14.
Prime 3.0 failed to process the equation and MathCAD 15 successfully processed the equation.

I have experienced limitations with MathCAD 15. When symbolically processing a larger function
and watching memory usage via Windows-Task-Manager-Processes, if the memory usage rises
slightly above 1.4 GB, the following Error message is displayed.
"Warning: An internal error has occurred. Please save your work and exit."

OS: Win-7-Ultmt 6.1 SP1, .NET-FW 4.51, MSXML 4.0 SP3, 12GB-RAM

I have to say that the Microsoft ribbon concept is less user friendly and that MathCAD
Prime 3.0 seems to run slower than MathCAD 15 on the same 64-bit PC.

 

[Erro11]

As I stated in the previous post,

"I have been a MathCAD user since MathCAD 3.0.
The frst thing I did after successfully installing MathCAD 15 M030 and Prime 3.0 was to
symbolically evaluate a large equation that I had trouble processing in MathCAD 14.
Prime 3.0 failed to process the equation and MathCAD 15 successfully processed the equation."

I can now add to this that,
Prime 3.1 failed to process the equation.

 

[PNachtwey]

I too have been using Mathcad since version 3.0. I stopped updating at version 13 because the symbolic processor for Mathcad 14 wasn't as good as Mathcad 13's. I have since switched to Mathematica for all my heavy duty symbolic processing requirements but I still do simulations in Mathcad 13.

I doubt I will ever switch to Mathcad Prime unless the symbolic processor can match Mathematica's and that will be tough.

I don't like the way Mathematica does simulations and graphs which is why I keep my Mathcad 13 around.


Peter Nachtwey
Delta Computer Systems

http://www.deltamotion.com

 

[Erro11]

Hello Peter N,
I have never used Mathematica. Is it difficult to come up to speed and enter equations for symbolic processing in Mathematica?

 

[IRstuff]

Mathematica is pretty much text-driven, so there are character combinations to represent operators and the like.

But, there are still other reasons for using MC, particularly if you're doing things with multiple units and units systems like Si and US.

TTFN
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[PNachtwey]

If you want to get a sense of what Mathematica is like first look at wxMaxima. wxMaxima is free.
Here is an example

http://www.deltamotion.com/peter/Maxima/AutoTuneEquations T0P1.html

http://www.deltamotion.com/peter/Maxima/MotionPlanning.html

http://www.deltamotion.com/peter/Maxima/Seg1234567.html

If you do a lot of symbolic processing like I do I highly recommend wxMaxima.

Mathcad is good at unit conversions but it has one great flaw.
It can't treat formulas as data that can be manipulated.
wxMaxima and Mathematica can. This opens up a whole new world of possibilities.
Another problem I have with Mathcad is that Mathcad will find a solution but not optimize it.
Mathematica will find a solution and then try to simplify the solution.
This works well but it requires lots of memory. My old Mathcad 13 didn't have a chance in 3 GB of memory on Win XP.

Mathematica has a player where people that don't have Mathematica can view Mathematica output.

https://www.wolfram.com/cdf-player/

This is a great tool if you want to share simulations.
Mathematica is one of those tools you will never truly master.

Mathematica and wxMaxima work under multiple operating systems.

I have only one license for Mathematica and one for Mathcad 13.
I have my Mathcad 13 running on a virtual machine since it doesn't work on operating systems past Windows XP.
I run wxMaxima on all my computers. wxMaxima is really just a wrapper for Lisp.
I have Windows 8, OS X and Debian Linux computers.
I think Mathematica will work on all these operating systems.








Peter Nachtwey
Delta Computer Systems

http://www.deltamotion.com

 

[GregLocock]

If you are looking for alternatives then python is gaining some momentum

Here's symbolic maths

http://docs.sympy.org/latest/modules/solvers/solvers.html

and here's a course that uses ipython notebooks, which are a combination of python and a simple documentation language, allowing you to provide self documenting worksheets

http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/...lessons/01_phugoid/01_01_Phugoid_Theory.ipynb

There is one enormous trap with python 1/42=0, which is logical, but terribly inconvenient to careless real world people like me.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

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[PNachtwey]

Greg, I have been looking at Python more more as a substitute for matlab and scilab. Python has math packages numpy and scipy. I will look into python's symbolic processing capability.


Peter Nachtwey
Delta Computer Systems

http://www.deltamotion.com

 

[Erro11]

One very important part of a symbolic processor is user-friendly equation entry and result display. When equations are very large and complicated, this is a major source of human error; the substitution of text for symbols increases complexity. MathCAD’s blackboard approach to symbolic entry, interpretation and documentation is far superior to all competition. That being said, PTC’s software department is lacking and they have been relying on MathSoft’s prior innovation to maintain their presence in the market place. PTC still has the edge with regards to entry, result display and documentation but will quickly fall behind if one of the current competitors can implement a similar user-friendly symbolic entry and display. I believe PTC’s best current product to be MathCAD 15. Prime 3.1 is a step down with respect to efficient user-friendly entry and interpretation. I also found the symbolic processor of MathCAD 15 more capable and faster than Prime 3.1.

 

[fel3]

I jumped from Mathcad 8.0 to Mathcad Prime 3.0 about 18 months ago, so for me this was a big upgrade. I know that Mathcad 15 is overall more capable, but Mathcad Prime 3.0 does just about everything I need, so I have standardized all of my regular calculations on it. I keep Mathcad 15 around mostly for reading interesting Mathcad 15 (and earlier) files and because it's required for converting older files to Mathcad Prime 3.0 format.

I was very dissapointed to learn that Mathcad Prime 3.1 does not read Mathcad Prime 3.0 files. This may have been PTC's biggest blunder to date.

One other difference between Mathcad and Mathcad Prime: Mathcad Prime is only divisible by itself and one.

==========
"Is it the only lesson of history that mankind is unteachable?"
--Winston S. Churchill

 

[IRstuff]

LOL

"This may have been PTC's biggest blunder to date."

That may be the biggest understatement of the still new year. That, and the fact that MPn do not downsave to M15. PTC drew a line in the sand, and few are bothering to step over it.

TTFN
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[zdas04]

That is crazy. No one makes a major format change between x.0 and x.1, and then to just abandon the x.0 users with no path forward is simple suicide. PTC has a solid user base, but it doesn't take many of those decisions to knock the legs out of that base. Anyone remember IBM's OS2? It took IBM from a dominant position to an non-entity in the PC market. PTC is working really hard to duplicate that performance in the (much smaller) science/engineering market.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist