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Graphics plotting and Kalman Filter relations

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Graphics plotting and Kalman Filter relations

OK I'll give it a try:

1) Better graphics-plotting. Somebody said here that Mathcad plotting was of the late Soviet era sophistication. I have no way of veryfying that specifically but I will have to agree in general. a)The colors are awful, especially the default "red". b) When one wants to change text thoughout a document it must include the titles and legends in the plots. Otherwise it has no utility, for me anyway. c) the 3-D should include a built-in medium resolution world map with continental and political boundaries as optional. This display should allow user to superimpose Earth satellites and/or missiles, the trajectories or orbits for which are supplied by the user. d) there should be more ways of annotating plots than the present hard-wired menu affords.

2) Is it feasible to include Extended and Linear Kalman Filter relations? After all, this has been around now for a half-century. Matlab has had this kind of thing for 20 years. Has any of this been treated in Forums? I haven't come across it. The recursive nature of these algorithms might be much faster in Mathcad than in the standard FORTRAN-like environments.

3) Although the report-producing capabilities of Mathcad Documents has been touted for a long time I have always found that what works (looks) best is to prepare reports in MS Word documents, using Mathcad to generate most of the equations, charts and plots for publication, by pasting them into the Word document. I wish that the Mathcad environment really did support the production of good looking technical reports.

4 Comments
RogerMansfield
1-Newbie

See http://blogs.ptc.com/bid/35028/Mathcad-Prime-1-0-is-Officially-Launched

PTC customers who have purchased ongoing maintenance (vs. single-user license) get Mathcad Prime 1.0 at no additional charge. You download it in the same manner that you download any maintenance release (but it is a new product, not a maintenance release).

Mathcad does not have an extended Kalman filter (EKF) as a built-in function. You have to construct that yourself using Mathcad's programming constructs. I've done a batch filter for orbit determination myself. Not a Kalman filter, but nevertheless a filter -- you typically need a batch filter to initialize an extended Kalman filter, at least for orbit determination. The batch filter allows you to verify that your formulation of the partials is correct, before you commence testing the EKF for convergence.

The 3D spacecraft trajectory plotting capability you allude to reminds me of AGI's STK. Mathcad is not so specialized. Mathcad is not just a toolkit* for aerospace engineering, it supports research in all areas of applied mathematics, as well as in the other sub-disciplines of engineering. (STK is not "just a toolkit" either -- its power, generality, and uniqueness in the domain of aerospace engineering are duly acknowledged.)

Still, I myself have done in Mathcad a 3D plot of observations of a spacecraft flyby -- Galileo's historic Earth 1 flyby of December 8, 1990. You can find this at http://www.imakenews.com/ptcexpress/e_article000733882.cfm?x=b9mFjBg,0,w

The 3D plot is crude by STK standards, but sufficient for the intended purpose. Sorry about the "late Soviet-era" quality of the globe -- but then again, what would greater coastal boundary resolution have accomplished in this example?

As regards implementing an extended Kalman filter via Mathcad programming constructs, the advantage of this over Matlab or FORTRAN (or Pascal, or C, ...) would not be speed, but rather easier debugging and experimentation with the math itself. If the ultimate goal is deliverable ASCII-text-based code, then by all means build a test bed in that code. But Mathcad still has value here in independently proving out the math and in generating test cases.

PhilipOakley
5-Regular Member

The idea of being able to access (and find the content) extra handbooks with things like Kalman filters and extended Kalman filters (and all those other filters...) would be good, but PTC has sold off its content support to Knovel, so I don't see it happening in a good way. It is not easy at the moment to create good handbooks which integrate with the overall product search capability. I I create a handbook, the main search should have it.

Things like Matlab have lots of fancy handbooks (toolboxes) that feel well integrated, and means that folks think there are more solutions located there. This is especially true with big users (Academia & big companies)

It should also be easy, like Matlab central, to find user worksheets that are 'solutions' or 'handbooks' located in say This community in a Handbooks document section.

Philip

NormanDanis
1-Newbie

I am a single user so I am not eligible for Mathcad Prime 1, 2, 3 or infinity, making my participation irrelevant. So I tried to find out what it would cost me (or the CEO) to change my status but did not get far. However I am "Case # 10158590" which sounds like the docket in a third world justice system. I am told that

" - responds to web account related requests and is not authorized to answer product specific questions." Maybe a sales rep will call me someday if I fill out the following forms, etc.. I was a simple question, really--and it has been instructive nevertheless. Maybe there will be something new for single users someday.

olivierlp
Community Manager
Status changed to: Archived

Hello,

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