Skip to main content
M
MarkBuckton10-Marble
10-Marble
March 18, 2015
Question

Mathcad Prime 3.1, 4 and 5 Lack of features

  • March 18, 2015
  • 14 replies
  • 30209 views

‌Can someone at PTC explain to us why Mathsoft that had a revenue of only $20 million was able to deliver a Mathcad product that is superior in just about everway to Mathcad Prime 3.1? If you recall, before PTC purchased Mathsoft for $62 million (yes they got a bargain) we had a Mathcad version with scriptable objects, Mathcad web server, flexible plotting with grid lines and dual y, legends and so on, the choice of solvers in the solve blocks, a faster interface, less ugly solve blocks, and the ability to save in a MS Word format. Probably the only thing missing was the units in solve blocks and auto numbering of equations as is done in Maple. Now we are told that probably not even version 5 of Mathcad will not have all these misting features That we had ten years ago. According to what I read PTC has revenues of 1.5 Billion per year. So the real question that one has to ask is how can a company 75 times the size of the original Mathsoft be so incompetent? What did happen to the original 130 Mathsoft employees? How many in the Mathcad division now? And what in the hell are they doing with their time? In my view, the only way that PTC can reinvigorate Mathsoft is to excise it from the main company i.e. make it a wholly owned subsidiary of the parent. If you recall this is what Apple did with FileMaker and that software has become better and better with each version. At present Mathcad gets more buggy with each version. Management it would seam is more interested in themselves than the product. As with many large companies middle management gets paid very well for doing almost nothing. PTC GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER or users will be leaving in droves. In what universe does someone pay many thousands of dollars in maintenance for a software product that gets worse with ever new version? I believe PTC new marketing catchphrase is

"There's a sucker born every minute"

    14 replies

    D
    davidsnelling1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    March 19, 2015

    Couldn't agree more Mark. Plotting is very poor in Mathcad 14 in that exported output does not meet publication standards, butt apparently Prime 3 is a step backwards.

      V
      24-Ruby IV
      ValeryOchkov24-Ruby IV
      24-Ruby IV
      March 20, 2015

      I remember when (2006) a message that PTC bought MathSoft came, the first reply here (Collaboratory forum) was - now Mathcad is going to its, pardon, end. (There is more correct strong Russian word )

      Yes - now we have Prime not Mathcad!

      T
      TonyBusby11-Visitor
      1-Visitor
      March 20, 2015

      I cannot print from Prime 3.1 as it's not, as claimed, fully compatible with Windows 8.1. It turns out that PTC's support team do not have access to a pc running windows 8.1 to help solve the problem as 'the decision was made to stay with windows 7'. Can you believe that?

      M
      MikeMcDermott1-Visitor
      1-Visitor
      March 20, 2015

      Is there a list somewhere of missing features of Prime 3.1 ? Here is a start.

      Plotting is lacking.

      No ability to lock regions.

      8-10x the launch time (~30 seconds compared to ~3-4 seconds for MC15)

      No right mouse button copy-past on equation editing. You have to use cntrl-c and cntrl-v

      V
      24-Ruby IV
      ValeryOchkov24-Ruby IV
      24-Ruby IV
      March 20, 2015

      Mike McDermott wrote:

      Is there a list somewhere of missing features of Prime 3.1 ? Here is a start.

      See please https://polls/1134

      M
      MikeMcDermott1-Visitor
      1-Visitor
      March 20, 2015

      Thanks, but the link doesn't work.

      R
      RickMason1-Visitor
      1-Visitor
      March 20, 2015

      It is completely pathetic the shape that 3.1 is in after all these years compared to v15! STILL don't have pre and post fix operators, STILL don't have the complete set of x-y plot features, and the conversion process for bringing v15 worksheets forward with ALL the same functionality of v15 is almost completely worthless. I have several 100+ page worksheets to try to convert and I'm building more all the time. On top of that I'm paying for yearly maintenance on v15 that is providing practically no useful improvements. I DON'T NEED INTEGRATION WITH A HUNDRED OTHER TOOLS. I NEED MATHCAD FUNCTIONALITY AND THE ADVANCEMENT OF MATHCAD FUCTIONALITY!!! This minimum requirement has been almost completely ignored by PTC in building an ostensibly "updated" product. Instead they give us some kind of ridiculous phone app and then have the unbelievable audacity to call it Prime.

      K
      kfalkenberg10-Marble
      10-Marble
      March 20, 2015

      I have difficulties to make my company pay for the licence.

      Why should we pay xy k€ for the maintenance of a product that is not improved ?

      And I must admit - it is reasonable to ask this question --


      D
      davidsnelling1-Visitor
      1-Visitor
      April 30, 2015

      The manager of our research group (approximately 10 users) has, reluctantly, decided to renew PTC support for Mathcad. I am the only one in the group who has even loaded Prime and I found converting our existing Mathcad files to Prime was so cumbersome and error prone I abandoned any further comparison of Prime and Mathcad. The limited graphics capability of Prime (not that Mathcad 15 is really adequate) and the absence of animation - which we use to conveniently scan large data sets – were obvious problems.

      We are now paying for support that really does not contribute to the development of software we are using. If Prime does not end up including most of the existing features of Mathcad and does not permit easy conversion of Mathcad files to Prime then all our legacy files are essentially stranded and unavailable to us. Our research group has used Mathcad for 2 decades for the initial processing of most raw data and its subsequent more detailed analysis. I don’t know any quick way to count files, but the number of our Mathcad files must run into the thousands. PTC is betraying the trust of long-time Mathcad users and will probably leave them with no support.

      More Matlab licenses are being added in our group to cover the consequences of future abandonment of Mathcad by PTC and most of our incoming personnel are more familiar with Matlab anyway. Unless there is a dramatic improvement in PTC Prime in the next couple of years I can see the use of Mathcad in our research group steadily declining.

        J
        JimMcWhirter1-Visitor
        1-Visitor
        May 1, 2015

        Very parallel experience and situation for my team. And I use animation often for the same purpose (to roll through large data sets) - interesting. And everything else you said - been there and agree. I started using Mathcad in graduate school in the late 1980's, and used it in the classroom when I was a professor, and extensively in my industry career. Long history with the product, and so sad and frustrating to see it languish. But I am slowly moving my work to Matlab because it is clear to me that PTC has every intention of stranding me and I want to start the transition while Matcad 15 is still supported. But I will miss the interface. And I am a Mathcad units junkie. Tried two versions of Prime, another person in our group tried latest - in all cases the "test period" was very short.

        Jim

        A
        akelly12-Amethyst
        12-Amethyst
        March 20, 2015

        I have installed 2.0, 3.0, and 3.1, but I still keep going back to 15. I use text styles heavily and sorely miss them. Navigation around the worksheet and manipulation of regions with the keyboard seemed much easier. Plotting was much, much, much, much better. The plot animation was very cool. I only used it once, but it was perfect for a presentation that I gave. I have the Roark's and Marks handbooks and miss those a lot, too.

          S
          StuartBruff23-Emerald V
          23-Emerald V
          March 20, 2015

          Andrew Kelly wrote:

          I have installed 2.0, 3.0, and 3.1, but I still keep going back to 15. I use text styles heavily and sorely miss them. Navigation around the worksheet and manipulation of regions with the keyboard seemed much easier. Plotting was much, much, much, much better. The plot animation was very cool. I only used it once, but it was perfect for a presentation that I gave. I have the Roark's and Marks handbooks and miss those a lot, too.

          I confess that I struggle to understand the rationale for not developing the basic capabilities of Mathcad, whilst simultaneously improving its utility to PTC. Mathcad graphics were pretty cool when first introduced but they became annoyingly clunky after a short time, and should really have been improved well before PTC took over. Animation is a case in point, it is frustratingly mandraulic and work should have begun almost immediately to allow the user to control it from within a worksheet, or at the very least to pick up its parameters from a worksheet ... Having to type in the control values every time is a nonsense, especially after more than a decade. Similar considerations apply to all of the other graphics, as well.

          I agree about the text styles. I use them in most of my worksheets, and I also make use of the Math Styles.

          Stuart

          S
          StuartBruff23-Emerald V
          23-Emerald V
          March 20, 2015

          Mark Buckton wrote:

          ... Probably the only thing missing was the units in solve blocks and auto numbering of equations as is done in Maple...

          I'm afraid there was a lot missing from M15 that should have been there, Mark. As I said in my reply to Andrew further down the thread, the graphics was in dire need of an overhaul to add more graph types and, specifically, to add/enhance automation and integrate them more closely into the worksheet. Who, for example, really enjoys manually adjusting the settings on a multiplot 3D Plot or Animation? None of Mathcad's major competitors make the user go through such a rigmarole. It should have been a straightforward exercise that could have been handled by a couple of smart summer intern students from MIT! What's really frustrating is that Mathsoft had some really good graphics that it might well have been able to port into Mathcad 2000 from its S-PLUS product.

          Mathcad has poor support for multidimensional arrays (eg, there's no empty array, indexing is appalling for other than 1- and 2-dimensional matrices, and it really should be smart enough to use vectors or ranges as indices), string handling is primitive, equations don't auto-wrap, programs don't auto-push, etc, etc..... I've made several lists over the years and, unlike the entries on Ko-Ko's list, all of them have been missed.

          Stuart

          T
          TonyBusby11-Visitor
          1-Visitor
          March 20, 2015

          Missing features from Prime. My List:

          1. Text Styles

          2. Customisable units

          3. Exponential Threshold

          4. The ability to customise the function categories that are displayed on the Functions tab on the ribbon bar

          5. More text formatting features such as subscripts and superscripts

          6. Individual margin controls for left, right, top and bottom margins.

          7. Align regions

          8. View regions

          9. Mixed fractions

          10. A right click menu within regions for cutting, copying, pasting etc.

          11. Redefining warnings

          12. Autosave

          13. Locked area

          14. Worksheet protection

          15. Hyperlinks

          16. Rulers and Tabs

          17. Scriptable objects

          18. Control objects

            R
            RichardJ19-Tanzanite
            19-Tanzanite
            March 20, 2015

            How about "save to an earlier version". Prime 3.1 can't even save to Prime 3.0 format, and Prime 3.0 can't read a Prime 3.1 file! That's ridiculous! Working cooperatively with Prime is not possible unless everyone is on the exact same version.

              M
              MarkBuckton10-MarbleAuthor
              10-Marble
              March 21, 2015

              The irony is that indeed on some occasion PTC ask users to give them list of what features they they should include in future versions of Mathcad. This initiative must be their form of appeasement because in the end PTC give us nothing. The missing features are more than obvious to anyone using Mathcad. The only conclusions one can draw is that tPTC management either don't care about Mathcad or haven't a clue about this software. To me and most users the development path is obvious - in first instance just give us back the Mathcad 15's features that everyone uses and have grown to love.

              I know of no other mainstream software produced by a large corporation that will not save to earlier versions. The mere fact that PTC ask the Mathcad forum to list missing features tells me that they don't understand Mathcad and supports my suspicion that its coding is mainly outsourced hence why they have very bad internal software quality insurance. I am a betatester for an architectural CAD package and their is no way that that company would release new versions of their software riddled with bugs and having less features than a previous versions (typically they deliver 150 new features per year). The idea that they wouldn't include backward and forward seamless conversion would be an anathema to most commercial software vendors. So the question remains WHY ARE USERS PAYING SOFTWARE MAINTENANCE for feature that they don't get? It may be a waste of time writing this stuff because I am afraid PTC JUST DON'T GET IT.

              T
              tietjee15-Moonstone
              15-Moonstone
              March 21, 2015

              Prime 3.1 has been very disappointing over Mathcad 15. I have been using Mathcad since the DOS days. There was always an improvement or new feature with each new release of Mathcad in those days. Mathcad is a scientific/engineering tool and PTC seems to lost that importance of some features. An example of this the plotting feature. It may be clunky compared to other programs, but extremely important to checking results. This could also be a result of the current training engineering/science students are getting. Remember the importance of plotting log/log graphs on paper.

              It seems the goal is to integrate Mathcad with PTC's Creo or SolidWorks. I did ask about integrating Prime 3.1 with SolidWorks Technical support told me to purchase the SDK. Based on another discussion, this does not appear to be a correct answer. It seems, technical support does not fully understand the capabilities of Prime 3.1. The integration may be beyond my skills, but I can be taught. I may then be a bigger proponent of Prime.

              PTC does not seem to be listening. It would be good if there was some response to these discussions. Releasing worksheets is not the answer. I can write the worksheets that are being released. In fact, mine are just a little more complex.

              Cheers

              M
              MarkBuckton10-MarbleAuthor
              10-Marble
              March 25, 2015

              If one had a job as a aircraft engineer say maintaining the Airbus A380, and is tasked to fix the aircraft's flight system but Airbus does not provide the control schematics for the avionics, then I think all would agree we are in DS. I suppose you could tinker around and try to fix the flight system but in doing so you would certainly be putting your own job and the life of passengers at huge risk. In Indian culture there is the famous story about the blind men and an elephant.


              So continuing the analogy, if it is true that PTC are charging 9K for example code so that one can take advantage of the SDK then I assume the outcome could be similar. Especially since very few will purchase the programming manual thus if final calculations are used in the product development area - maybe to produce aeroplane parts for example then one can only imagine the potential consequence. So if PTC Mathcad shortsightedness continues then who knows what consequences lay in store. The only rational option is for existing users to look for another "aeroplane" provider. One may argue that the user is not always correct but if the aeroplane cannot fly and there is no way to fix it then both user and their customers have a big problem.


              Ultimately, in our case it is not the user, their customers but PTC that will have the big problem. So in my view, complaining about the Mathcad Prime shortcomings in many ways is altruistic as it has the potential to wake PTC employees from their slumber so that they can engineer a product that they can be proud of and which provides value for money and so ensures PTC long term success. Continuing the flight metaphor, at one point in time we had a peregrine falcon but now we have a Prime Dodo - lets hope Mathcad does not end up as curiosity in some technology museum.

              Show more replies
              Terms & ConditionsCookie settingsAccessibility statement