Mathcad Ideas

1. Describe your environment: What is your industry? What is your role in your organization? Describe your stakeholders. Nuclear, Energy, Defence. Lead Stress Engineering Manager 2. What version of Mathcad are you currently running? v15 3. Describe the problem you are trying to solve. Please include detailed documentation such as screenshots, images or video. I'm trying to solve the many problems with Prime as fundamentally it should do EVERYTHING that Mathcad 15 does. 4. What is the use case for your organization? I run a department of stress engineers who use Mathcad all day, every day. 5. What business value would your suggestion represent for your organization? We cannot work with Prime, it's slow and incredibly frustrating. ... View more

1. Describe your environment: What is your industry? What is your role in your organization? Describe your stakeholders. Electronics. R&D. 2. What version of Mathcad are you currently running? Prime 9 3. Describe the problem you are trying to solve. Please include detailed documentation such as screenshots, images or video. When I installed Prime 9, with Prime 8 already installed, the installer did not pull application options from the existing installation.   4. What is the use case for your organization? Upgrade version 5. What business value would your suggestion represent for your organization? Improved ease of use ... View more

1. Describe your environment: What is your industry? What is your role in your organization? Describe your stakeholders. - I am a bridge engineer for a provincial transportation department. 2. What version of Mathcad are you currently running? Prime 8.0.0.0 3. Describe the problem you are trying to solve. Please include detailed documentation such as screenshots, images or video. The explicit function is un-usable for most of my work as you have very little to no control over how many decimal places will appear and the units that will be used. The current function results in eqns that extend off the sheet because several variables go to 10 decimal places. Making the font size smaller doesn't work because it is so long.   As well, many eqns we use are long, so restating them prior to the explicit function uses up a great deal of space. If the input eqn and the explicit function itself could be hidden, that would be helpful on cutting down space.   I have attached our bending resistance calculation with the explicit function as well as our current practice or restating the variables. Even breaking the eqn down into smaller terms the explicit function cannot function.   4. What is the use case for your organization? Whenever we complete engineering calculations and they are pdf/printed and reviewed by another engineer line by line. It would make the review process much more efficient if the reviewer could see the values of the inputs into eqns, similar to how one would complete hand calculations.    Once reviewed, the work is stored, as a paper copy, in our file room for future use. 5. What business value would your suggestion represent for your organization? Reduced time reviewing calculations as you can quickly verify the inputs are correct and so that someone referring to the paper copy 50 years from now (our structures have a life of 100 years) can easily follow them long after MathCAD has moved onto version 50. Time would also be reduced as currently we have to restate all the variables that were used under the eqn.   Right now we only have a couple mathcad licenses, being able to do this would help get some of the more hesitant engineers on board so we can expand mathcad's use in our department.  ... View more

1. Mostly stress calculations 2. Prime 8 3. Prime adds unnecessary parentheses to results when there's an exponential in the result, e.g. Why isn't this at least optional? 4. What is the use case for your organization? What does this question mean? 5. Makes the document easier to read ... View more

A warning is required for all MathCad users who have been comfortable copying and pasting algebraic results from the solver into other expressions. The attached worksheet shows the problem is still  unresolved in Prime9 - even with the new grad operator:   The workaround is to use the assigned variable and not a copy-and-paste version of the given answer unless you are sure that prime will correctly interpret the expression. Easy to do for simple expressions but not for anything complex.   This is a workaround until the original fault report is fully resolved.     ... View more

In a large worksheet, the green dot on the lower left of the screen is a very unreliable indicator of computation having been completed. The problem is when editing. If you think you have corrected a formula and wait for the computation to complete by looking for a green dot and then continue to edit trying to fix a bug - the chances are that computation is still in progress - it hasn't got to the point where you made the edit and so you make further edits based on your last edit being wrong - when in fact it was OK. The workaround is to open Windows Task Manager and wait for it to confirm completion and not rely on the green dot. ... View more

Prime 9 has improved the colour highlighting options for text - but the highlighting of maths regions is a bit clunky as you have to choose precisely the same colour code from an analogue slider selection every time you want to highlight some maths. Ideally, there should be some quick way of using exactly the same colour as last used - maybe a copy format ability, or better still,  (if it's not in the standard palette) extending what is newly available for text to maths? ... View more

1. Describe your environment: What is your industry? What is your role in your organization? Describe your stakeholders. I am an analysis engineer working in the nuclear industry. I create calculations that need to be easy to read by my colleagues and the clients that my company serves. 2. What version of Mathcad are you currently running? Mathcad Prime 8 3. Describe the problem you are trying to solve. Please include detailed documentation such as screenshots, images or video. The Mathcad 15 (xmcd) to Prime (mcdx) converter produces documents that are unreadable and can take several days work just to adjust the formatting such that the converted document is readable. The main issue is that the spacing between regions is not consistent so that every single converted page needs attention just to get the original content back onto the same page. The time saved if the converter could be improved such that the converted page looks like the original would be enormous.  - Margins from the original document should be maintained  - Spacing between regions should be maintained  4. What is the use case for your organization? The team that I work in produce analysis reports for our clients. Every time a report needs to be updated we have to convert to Prime and we spend a lot of time just producing something that resembles the original. Our reports can run into hundreds of pages and can take several days to adjust the formatting.  5. What business value would your suggestion represent for your organization? The time saved if the converted file was representative of the original would allow resource to work on producing new work which we can charge our clients for instead of the current massive overhead of time wasted reformatting converting reports. As an example it has taken me nearly 3 hours this afternoon just to reformat a 50 page report.   The screenshots I have attached compare an example original pdf from Mathcad 15 with the unedited converted file which has added 130 pages of whitespace (323 pages vs 194 pages originally). I hope you can appreciate it is a massive job to make the converted file readable. ... View more

1. Describe your environment: What is your industry? What is your role in your organization? Describe your stakeholders. Electronics. R&D. 2. What version of Mathcad are you currently running? Mathcad Prime 8 3. Describe the problem you are trying to solve. Please include detailed documentation such as screenshots, images or video. Our worksheets can span many pages and reference the same variable multiple times. I would like a 'find variable' feature that will allow me to navigate to a particular reference of that variable.   4. What is the use case for your organization? We need to review worksheets that can be lengthy. 5. What business value would your suggestion represent for your organization? Review efficiency and accuracy. ... View more

1. Describe your environment: What is your industry? What is your role in your organization? Describe your stakeholders. We are a Structural/Bridge Engineering company. My role is Product Development Engineer. My stakeholders are upper management as well as reviewing parties (e.g., State DOTs) 2. What version of Mathcad are you currently running? Prime 8.0 3. Describe the problem you are trying to solve. Please include detailed documentation such as screenshots, images or video. When utilizing the Excel component of Mathcad, the image produced on the PDF version of the document is blurry. It can be read, but the blurriness looks quite unprofessional. Unfortunately, all of our calculations must be PDF'd at some point, so a seamless transition between Mathcad and PDF is important. 4. What is the use case for your organization? We use the PDF function on every calculation package we produce; therefore, it is crucial to our workflow. 5. What business value would your suggestion represent for your organization? Our goal is to provide high-quality products both in the components we produce and the documentation accompanying those components. Having blurry images mixed in with otherwise professional-looking calculations takes away from the whole package.   ... View more

1. Describe your environment: What is your industry? What is your role in your organization? Describe your stakeholders. Consumer products, Senior Design Engineer, New Product Introduction 2. What version of Mathcad are you currently running? Mathcad Prime 8.0.0.0 3. Describe the problem you are trying to solve. Please include detailed documentation such as screenshots, images or video. Mathcad Prime doesn’t have a means to split the screen to look at different sections in a worksheet at the same time (like Word and Foxit does). Some of my worksheets are large (over 100 pages) and I need to access different areas in a worksheet at the same time to copy and paste. 4. What is the use case for your organization? Documentation 5. What business value would your suggestion represent for your organization? Faster creation of new content ... View more

1. Describe your environment: What is your industry? What is your role in your organization? Describe your stakeholders. Construction and engineering 2. What version of Mathcad are you currently running? Prime 8 3. Describe the problem you are trying to solve. Please include detailed documentation such as screenshots, images or video. Hi, we would like to have the date in header automatic and therefore we want to use the Saved date feature under Document.   But there is only MM-DD-YYYY, MM-DD-YY, DD-MM-YYYY and DD-MM-YY. We would like to be able to add a format for "Saved date" according to standard ISO 8601, that is YYYY-MM-DD. Is it possible or are there any workarounds for this? 4. What is the use case for your organization? This is what our country and many other country uses as a Date format. And it would be nice to use this automatic feature instead of writing it manually in our Header. 5. What business value would your suggestion represent for your organization? It would be a neat feature and would be greatly appreaciated. ... View more

1. Describe your environment: What is your industry? What is your role in your organization? Describe your stakeholders. I'm a mechanical engineer and make complex strength calculations and check similar done by others. However, the proposal applies to anyone using chart components and wanting better control over data limits and grids in them. 2. What version of Mathcad are you currently running? We are currently running Prime 7, but I did not see any mention of changes in this regard in What's new in Prime 8. 3. Describe the problem you are trying to solve. Please include detailed documentation such as screenshots, images or video. If Chart component has user defined range, that will define the plot extents and the number of major grids in the plot. Xmin and Xmax can then be used to limit plot data for continuous functions. Ymin and Ymax can likely be used for same purpose in 3D plots, but in 2D they seem to do nothing. This would be OK except that user defined range can't be set from inputs and thus it can't follow changes in data.   If chart does not have user defined range, but has Xmin, Xmax, Ymin and Ymax, those will limit the chart extents and continuous data is plot to those extents. Discrete data limits have no effect on the chart limits and there seems to be no way to control the number of major grids. This results in ugly numbers for major grids. This applies to middle grids in all cases and to end grids in cases where showing on continuous function is not valid outside certain limits and thus those have to be used as chart limits.   If chart does not have any limits defined, the chart is extended to cover the data in such a way that the major grids are "neat". Continuous functions are shown from -10 to 10 and the same is used for defining chart limits. This works for discrete data, but is not really usable for continuous functions.   Optimally I would like to propose two things. The first is to make the user defined range variables accessible from Inputs. As discussed above, they are not quite interchangeable with Xmin etc. available currently. This would allow total control of the plot based on the data you put there.   The other suggestion is an alternate definition for Steps. Instead of defining the number of steps between minimum and maximum I would prefer to define the distance between major gridlines. For the logarithmic scale this could be the logarithmic power and default to 10. The major gridlines (linear scale) would start from zero and just show the gridlines that happen to fall within min and max values. This would require that plot min and max would no longer necessarily be major gridlines.   I would preferably have both, but either one alone would go a long way towards providing sensible major divisions for the plots even with (reasonably) changing data. The attached sheet has the same proposal text with charts to illustrate the current behavior. 4. What is the use case for your organization? The purpose is to have documents where the plot are is effectively used regardless of changes in data while retaining nice round numbers for major gridlines as this helps estimation of intermediate values. For my immediate organization that would likely be moment, stress and deflection plots, but it is directly applicable to any other X-Y and likely X-Y-Z plot as well. 5. What business value would your suggestion represent for your organization? More professional looking and easier to use graphs for changing data with less work once the initial setup is done. ... View more

1. Describe your environment: What is your industry? What is your role in your organization? Describe your stakeholders. Analaysis team within aerospace. 2. What version of Mathcad are you currently running? Prime 7 3. Describe the problem you are trying to solve. Please include detailed documentation such as screenshots, images or video. Pleaes add word-style tools to align blocks / formula / pictures to LH edge, top edge, centre of page etc. Basically, copy what microsoft does in Word and Powerpoint 4. What is the use case for your organization? Improving efficiency. Improving standard of final result. Enhances credability of Mathcad Prime as a genuine doumentation tool. 5. What business value would your suggestion represent for your organization? Improving efficiency. Improving standard of final result. Easier adoption of Mathcad as a tool for final documentation. ... View more

1. Describe your environment: What is your industry? What is your role in your organization? Describe your stakeholders. I work for a consultancy which works predominantly in the nuclear and defence industries. 2. What version of Mathcad are you currently running? Prime 8 3. Describe the problem you are trying to solve. Please include detailed documentation such as screenshots, images or video. In Mathcad 15 you could just type and pressing the space bar turned it to text.  Now we have to press ctrl + t to enable a text box.  I don't see why this extra step was added as it's just an unnecessary step (albeit a small one) but how many times out of habit do people just start typing only to find they have to delete it because they forgot to press ctrl + t first?! 4. What is the use case for your organization? N/A 5. What business value would your suggestion represent for your organization? N/A ... View more

1. Describe your environment: What is your industry? What is your role in your organization? Describe your stakeholders. Consumer Products, Senior Design Engineer, New Product Introduction 2. What version of Mathcad are you currently running? Mathcad Prime 8.0.0.0 3. Describe the problem you are trying to solve. Please include detailed documentation such as screenshots, images or video. When using control-T to add text anywhere in a document, it would be great if the text box automatically sensed the right margin and adjusted the size of the box based on the distance to the right margin. 4. What is the use case for your organization? Ease of use 5. What business value would your suggestion represent for your organization? Faster worksheet creation   ... View more

1. Describe your environment: What is your industry? What is your role in your organization? Describe your stakeholders. Consumer Products, Senior Design Engineer, New Product Introduction 2. What version of Mathcad are you currently running? Mathcad Prime 8.0.0.0 3. Describe the problem you are trying to solve. Please include detailed documentation such as screenshots, images or video. Put the most-used fonts at the top of the font list. Word does this. 4. What is the use case for your organization? Faster worksheet creation 5. What business value would your suggestion represent for your organization? Ease of use. ... View more

1. Describe your environment: What is your industry? What is your role in your organization? Describe your stakeholders. Industry - Medical Device R&D Title - Distinguished R&D Engineer (technical director-level developing & driving tools and methods) Stake Holders - R&D Leadership and every design engineer 2. What version of Mathcad are you currently running? Mathcad 15 and Prime 8 3. Describe the problem you are trying to solve. Please include detailed documentation such as screenshots, images or video. All of our Mathcad files include units, and every file that gets converted always leaves unit assignments from Mathcad 15 as plain text to be manually assigned a "tag" after conversion. Most auto-populate following the 1st assignment, but certain situations do not. There would be a very significant  time savings to have the conversion default to assuming the text following a variable assignment was a unit "tag". This way most every instance would be converted properly. The conversion process should still add a red arrow to the converted file, indicating there may be an incorrect conversion at this location...just in-case it was not a unit assignment and a simple multiplication of a user-assigned variable name that has been defined to override the default Prime unit definition (VERY rare). 4. What is the use case for your organization? Every conversion of hundreds of Mathcad files (many thousands of pages). 5. What business value would your suggestion represent for your organization? Significant time, and "time = money"... ... View more

We use Mathcad Prime 8 for documentation of structural analysis of penstocks for hydropower plants and other pressuer bearing devices, trash rakes, and gates.  The ability to retrace the calculation is obligatory. Values of defined variables have to be inserted in equations. We are doing this using <implicit,ALL> command. Not only, that this is a very long evaluation key word, it does not look very nice in documentation.   When using Mathcad 15, it is possible to hide the evaluation key word and replace the rigth arrow sign by an equal sign.   Please bring back this Mathcad15 feature to Mathcad Prime ... View more