Skip to main content
ptc-1868041-Visitor
1-Visitor
April 24, 2012
Question

Mathcad Prime 2.0 plotting functionality. Argh!!

  • April 24, 2012
  • 28 replies
  • 22670 views

I am so frustrated by Mathcad's continued plotting ineptitude I can hardly take it. We waited for years and years for the old Mathcad to add the flexibility needed to make decent looking plots and it NEVER happened. Now in my first few hours of working with Prime 2.0 (I skipped 1.0) I am already extremely frustrated by basic stuff that really makes me wonder about the development team. Come on, guys, I know you can do better than this!

Contour plots:

- z-axis scale/color bar is now included, hooray!

- however, it's location and orientation are fixed (bottom, horizontal)

- why can't I move it to the right and make it vertical?

- The labeling interval of the z-axis scale bar is tied to the number of

contour intervals. No!!! If I want a lot contours then my labels get

all mashed together and become completely unreadable. Totally

unacceptable.

- If I change the weight of the lines that separate the contours, the

line weights in the z-axis scale bar do not change correspondingly.

Come on!!

- No secondary y-axis in the second major release?? Very poor.

I need this all the time.

- I can't change the font or the font size used for the axis labels. I've

only been waiting for this for uh...let's see...how old am I now??

- Why does the x- and y-axes extend beyond the minimum value set

for the axes? This leads to odd/awkward-looking axes, at least, not

like any plots I've seen or want to make myself.

- Why can't I use a ticked/labeled box around my plots? It seems the

only option is the two intersecting axes.

- Um, how do I put titles on my plot axes? Am I just being dense here?

- Thanks for letting me rant. I guess it's export back to Excel for now

for a lot of my plots. Not that I like Excel's plots, either, believe me.

But at least with fiddling I can get a decent-looking, READABLE plot

out of Excel to present to other engineers and scientists, or include

in a paper. Not possible with what I've seen in Prime 2.0. Sigh...

    28 replies

    FanCG1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    April 25, 2012

    i m trying its 2D-plotting. and find that prime losts lots of features in mathcad.

    in other words, mathcad‘ is even less flexible and exercisable than mathcad 5.

    when I double click the elements i wanna change (say, like axis range, symbol size) in a graph, I find I can do nothing.

    maybe I will go back to mathcad, not this prime version

    Does PTC wanna make mathcad prime an attachement of its Pro/E? or Are the staffs of Pro E team like this kind of operation?

    where the old mathcad developing team?

    MikeArmstrong1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    April 25, 2012

    Does PTC wanna make mathcad prime an attachement of its Pro/E? or Are the staffs of Pro E team like this kind of operation?

    where the old mathcad developing team?

    IMO PTC have tried to bring the front end interface of Mathcad in to the modern era, which I don't mind as long as Prime reaches a level that M15 is currently at, which I think they will but it will take a few more versions yet.

    Mike

    RichardJ19-Tanzanite
    19-Tanzanite
    April 25, 2012

    - Thanks for letting me rant.

    I am going to avoid saying anything too much about graphing. I've posted my opinions on the forums several times, and PTC is certainly aware of them. If I get going my rant would probably be much longer than yours!

    In summary, Mathcad graphing has always been rather poor, although it did gradually improve until MC15. Then it fell off a cliff.

    ptc-21937131-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    April 25, 2012

    I agree with Richard. Prime2 is a step back in graphing from v15. It is like the programers have no idea what graphing is used for. Presentation to check data, fellow workers, customers, etc. Prime2 plotting does little to support anyone of those activities. Symbols, colors, traces is about 25% of the presentation. Some plots have to be black and white.

    MBuck21-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    April 28, 2012

    In my view, PTC cannot ignore its users in this regard. It is ridiculous that a AUD$2,630 profession program such as MC Prime 2 affords very much less plot functionality that one can archive with a relatively inexpensive standalone plotting such a DPlot. Even MS Excel does a better job in my view. The secondary y-axis is a very serious limitation and who had the bright idea that people didn't need gridlines or flexible legends or titles. Plotting in MC 14 and 15 is not as flexible as DPlot, but at least one generate an almost publish ready plot. Please don't tell me that we can use the text tool to embellish ones plots - this is an amaturish approach at best.

      ptc-21937131-Visitor
      1-Visitor
      May 10, 2012

      Another post asked for samples of multithreading. My current project uses a excel file with 5 worksheets. Each work sheet has about 35,000 data point. Prime2's multiththreading and x64 would facilitate analysis of the data. Unfortunately, I am unable to use Prime2 because of the poor plotting functionality. MathCAD really has to include some the basic items from v15.

      Raiko17-Peridot
      17-Peridot
      May 11, 2012

      Hi,

      yesterday I attended a webcast concerning MC-Prime 2.0. After I skipped MC Prime 1.0 I thought I'll give it a try. After the webcast I decided that I I won't change to Prime any time soon. Too many limitations in setting up documents and too many workarounds necessary to get a decent (i.e. presentable) document. E.g. in xy plots I noticed that trace labels can only be depicted as lines. So if I choose a different symbol, I can't find it in the label box. This is not an annoyance but a serious hindrance!

      I therefore agree with David Tietje:"It is like the programers have no idea what graphing is used for." Sigh!

      Raiko

        MikeArmstrong1-Visitor
        1-Visitor
        May 11, 2012

        I have to agree. Prime 2.0 isn't quite there but I believe Prime 3.0 won't be that far away, fingers crossed ;-).

        Mike

        Raiko17-Peridot
        17-Peridot
        May 14, 2012

        I sincerely hope that MC 3.0 does the trick.

        Raiko

        davidsnelling1-Visitor
        1-Visitor
        December 15, 2012

        That is very disappointing. Mathcad has never been able to export report quality graphics and data has to be exported to programs that can. Even Excel is better than Mathcad for report quality graphics.

        The former Mathsoft purchased Axum many years ago – Axum was a versatile plotting program. Instead of incorporating Axum features into Mathcad, Mathsoft seems to have buried Axum.

        Has anyone successfully used any version of Mathcad to export publication quality plots?

        RichardJ19-Tanzanite
        19-Tanzanite
        December 15, 2012

        Has anyone successfully used any version of Mathcad to export publication quality plots?

        Very rarely, and then only by using software such as CorelDraw or Adobe Illustrator to clean it up. But Mathcad to publication quality directly? No. Never.

        I usually export the data to Excel, and go from there.

          davidsnelling1-Visitor
          1-Visitor
          March 28, 2014

          Richard Jackson said "I usually export the data to Excel, and go from there."


          I have just done that with 6 Mathcad plots and not being familiar with Excel it was a painful and frustrating process, but at least the final plots will be acceptable to a Journal as Richard’s remark implied.


          Why won’t PTC put more resources into improving plots or at least allowing them to be readily exported to some program that will produce report quality graphics?


          Are we coming up to a point where we will have to switch to Prime? How easy will it be to convert hundreds of gigabytes of older Mathcad files?


          We have young engineers coming into our research group who are much more familiar with MatLab and older, confirmed Mathcad users, like myself, are near retirement. Maybe in preparation for the demise of Mathcad 15 we should run both software packages? Is MatLab any better at producing report quality graphics? Is anyone else facing the same dilemma?

          RichardJ19-Tanzanite
          19-Tanzanite
          March 28, 2014

          Are we coming up to a point where we will have to switch to Prime?

          Unless a lot changes, I will only be dragged there kicking and screaming.

          How easy will it be to convert hundreds of gigabytes of older Mathcad files?

          Unless a lot changes, agony.

          Is MatLab any better at producing report quality graphics?

          Compared with Prime (which can't produce anything other than a bitmap!), a pen and paper and a scanner is almost as good.

          MikeArmstrong1-Visitor
          1-Visitor
          March 28, 2014

          Is MatLab any better at producing report quality graphics?

          Compared with Prime (which can't produce anything other than a bitmap!), a pen and paper and a scanner is almost as good.

          Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement