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1-Visitor
November 25, 2014
Question

mathcad 15 and mathcad prime 3.0

  • November 25, 2014
  • 2 replies
  • 4484 views

hi,

i would know the difference between mathcad 15 and mathcad prime 3.0.

which version should i get?

thanks

2 replies

24-Ruby IV
November 25, 2014
1-Visitor
November 25, 2014

yes i've checked other questions and i've just seen that i can get both, but my first question is: what is the difference between them?

thank you

24-Ruby IV
November 25, 2014

angelo finamore wrote:

but my first question is: what is the difference between them?

see please polls with those difference

http://communities.ptc.com/polls/1141

http://communities.ptc.com/polls/1134

25-Diamond I
November 25, 2014

angelo finamore wrote:

hi,

i would know the difference between mathcad 15 and mathcad prime 3.0.

which version should i get?

thanks

That depends on your needs.

Prime should have been the successor of Mathcad 15 but is a complete new development (at least concerning the user interface). PTC seems to have heavy underestimated the effort and ressources needed and came up with an absolutely unuseable version 1. And even now in version 3 Prime, while it has some (few) improvements over mathcad 15, is missing a whole lot of features, is extremely slow and in the opinion of many long term users rather unconfortable to use. So at the time most experienced users seem to rather stay with Mathcad 15 and either wait for Prime will live up to MC15 one day or are looking for alternatives.

If you are new to Mathcad you have to decide if you want to learn an older but more powerful and comfortable version which one day will be outdated and replaced by a future version of Prime or if you dare to start right away with Prime 3 and live with its many restrictions and drawbacks. It also depends on your needs. If you work and share worksheets with people using Mathcad, too, you should use the version they use. If you have to work with or modify older existing mathcad sheets it probably will be better to work in MC15 rather than trying to convert those legacy sheets into Prime format because this often results in a non working sheet or at best will "just" require a lot of efforts to manually change it to make it work.

If you search the forum here you will find a lot of articles about Prime with pros and cons - OK, mostly cons, I guess.

So its your decision what to do. I would suggest you install both and give 'em a try. If you have rather basic calculation needs you might be happy with Prime, otherwise you have "real" Mathcad at hand, too.