Add Grid to a plot

[DS_10024912]

I've imported a MathCAD 15 document into PTC Mathcad Prime 7.   I want to add grids to the plots.  I don't know how.  The documentation doesn't match what I see in PTC Mathcad Prime 7.   Not sure what to do.

[DJNewman · Accepted solution]

PTC Mathcad Prime 7 has two ways of making plots. One is the "quick" way of the Plots tab, and the other is the more-controlled, detailed Chart Component found in the Math tab.

You'll want to convert your Mathcad 15 plot to a Chart Component plot in Mathcad Prime 7 to show/hide and add gridlines. See this part of the documentation:

https://support.ptc.com/help/mathcad/r7.0/en/index.html#page/PTC_Mathcad_Help/to_show_hide_gridlines_in_chart.html

I hope that helps!

[DS_10024912]

That's what I did - I created a Chart Component and manually recreated the graph in a Chart Component.  

[Werner_E]

Primes native plots miss a lot of things which are often asked for in this forum. Instead of improving its plot functionality PTC decided to integrate a third party chart component, the usage of which DJNewman is suggesting. Unfortunately the integration was done rather badly, the component is slow and inconvenient to handle, does not support units (!!) and is quite unusable if you are working with a small screen but high resolution (4K display on a notebook) because the component does not scale accordingly.

But, alas, this component offers some of the missing features like gridlines, secondary y-axis, labels and more - fairly basic "features" for a plot component. So you may give it a try to see if its a solution for you.

In the times where this chart component was not yet integrated me and others created workarounds for adding grids to Primes plots by adding the grid as an additional trace. One example can be found here:

https://community.ptc.com/t5/PTC-Mathcad/In-MCD-Prime-4-0-is-there-any-way-to-add-gridlines-to-plots/m-p/86492/highlight/true#M34243

LucMeekes also posted solutions which will even work in the Express version (where no programming is allowed).

[DS_10024912]

@Werner_E  -  It just happens that I have large 4k monitors for my Desktop.  I'll have to see how the Chart Component looks on my MacBook (I run Parallels).

[Werner_E]

Just give the chart component a try and tell us what you think about it.

I was talking about a 15,6" 4K display using the recommended Windows scale factor 250%. Current software normally automatically takes care of that, older software usually can be made better usable by changing their "High DPI setting". But Primes chart component seems to ignore all of this and is completely unimpressed by it all. So font size, line width etc. are far too small in those charts and the component is (to stay polite) hard and difficult to handle.

[DS_10024912]

@Werner_E  - So far so good.  The Chart Component looks fine - I was able to add grid lines.   I take it that the other style of plot (the one imported from MathCAD 15) cannot have grid lines?   

[Werner_E]

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@DS_10024912 wrote:

@Werner_E  - So far so good.  The Chart Component looks fine - I was able to add grid lines.   I take it that the other style of plot (the one imported from MathCAD 15) cannot have grid lines?   

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Glad you found a solution which works for your purpose.

And yes, the native Prime plot does not offer gridlines and as PTC added that third party component, I won't expect them to put effort in improving the native plots. So if you use them, you either have to do without grid lines or you use a workaround like the one I linked to, where the grid is implemented as an additional trace..
I also have seen people helping themselves by using a couple of horizontal and vertical markers.