Additional Units for Mathcad Prime 3.0

[mzeftel]

We are planning to add some new units to Mathcad Prime 3.0. What units do you want to see in Mathcad? Vote on the ones you are missing.

Thanks,

Mona Zeftel

Program Manager

[JohnDoe]

Please add the nano-henry unit (10^-9 Henry).

[ELSID]

Just see Valery's response above dated Aug 3, 2012 7:44 AM

http://communities.ptc.com/message/186807#186807.

nH:=10^9*H

Now if it's used in industry ALOT ... like cm or mm, I can see the request. Hell, KIPs are used in the US and not part of the base units.

Not a unit request , but a request non-the-less

How about annotation and drawing functionality with industry symbols per ISA or equivalent EU standard. Mathcad is used for engineering and sometimes CAD drawings are not used. If I could draw basic systems (even as rudimentary as Adobe) to sketch would be a great feature.

Example would be the insulation file uploaded by Alan Stevens http://communities.ptc.com/docs/DOC-3093. He brought in a JPG. This would have been a snap in Adobe

[StuartBruff]

ELSID wrote:

Not a unit request , but a request non-the-less

How about annotation and drawing functionality with industry symbols per ISA or equivalent EU standard. Mathcad is used for engineering and sometimes CAD drawings are not used. If I could draw basic systems (even as rudimentary as Adobe) to sketch would be a great feature.

Example would be the insulation file uploaded by Alan Stevens http://communities.ptc.com/docs/DOC-3093. He brought in a JPG. This would have been a snap in Adobe

Drawing tools have been on the feature request list since at least 2005.

[JohnDoe]

nH:=10^9*H

Now if it's used in industry ALOT ... like cm or mm, I can see the request. Hell, KIPs are used in the US and not part of the base units.

Yes bro in the RF industry we use almost exclusively nanohenry for inductors. Microhenry too but not that oft, especially for frequencies above 1 GHz.

[ValeryOchkov]

You can do a reference on my sheet and have a lot of new units:

It will be good to have it for Mathcad Prime too!

[OscarJ.]

Good morning,

I would like to see the symbols used for units as per SI:

hour: h (not hr)

gram: g (not gm)

...

Best Regards,

Oscar J.

[RichardJ]

I agree. This was not the case in MC15 and earlier because g and h conflicted with built in constants. This is a non-issue in Prime though, because of the labels.

[HarveyHensley]

I guess it does me no harm if there is a unit for heat capacity, like cal/g/C, or kcal/kg/C, but why? There currently is no name for it, unlike W = J/s. Also, the combinations can be extensive. If you add new units that are combinations of the existing units, the rule should be "is there a common name for it?" If you add the heat capacity unit, then it means remembering a new name, which most people won't know, so most people won't use it. Thus, if you need a new combination of units, do what we do now and create it yourself. Of course, if you use it for your output, most people won't know what it is unless the name looks just like the definition: so again, what was the point?

An example of a unit that most people would know, but that doesn't exist in MC15 is a barrel, or bbl. It might be nice to have that, but it's no big deal for me to create it when needed.

Most of the other suggestions deal with names for different orders of magnitude. Maybe some thought could be given to an order of magnitude placeholder in addition to a units placeholder. This would eliminate having to go through the list of units making nano this, nano that, kilo this, kilo that etc.

[RichardJ]

Most of the other suggestions deal with names for different orders of magnitude. Maybe some thought could be given to an order of magnitude placeholder in addition to a units placeholder. This would eliminate having to go through the list of units making nano this, nano that, kilo this, kilo that etc.

I hate to sound like a stuck record (like me, you are old enough to understand that analogy in more than just an abstract way ), but full support of SI prefixes is a long standing request. Sigh

[HarveyHensley]

Regarding my repeated practice of suggesting changes that have been requested for decades, I prefer to forge blindly ahead knowing you or Stuart will point out my extreme tardiness.. It saves me time trolling through the archives to see when it was first proposed. However, since the changes are still needed, I have no guilt for bringing them to the forum once again.

[RichardJ]

I prefer to forge blindly ahead knowing you or Stuart will point out my extreme tardiness.

He's side A, I'm side B.

However, since the changes are still needed, I have no guilt for bringing them to the forum once again.

Indeed. You can be side C (OK, so now the analogy is a little thin, but since it's a virtual record it can have as many sides as needed!). A stuck record is so annoying that hopefully someone will eventually act out of desparation

[HarveyHensley]

I'm starting to like the stuck record analogy. My "C" side has to be the cutting edge. My cutting edge will slice through the bureaucratic quagmire, get to the heart of the development beast, and resuscitate it to the fully productive capacity of it's youth, all while the chorus from sides A and B play in the background. Or so I like to dream.

[StuartBruff]

Harvey Hensley wrote:

Regarding my repeated practice of suggesting changes that have been requested for decades, I prefer to forge blindly ahead knowing you or Stuart will point out my extreme tardiness.. It saves me time trolling through the archives to see when it was first proposed. However, since the changes are still needed, I have no guilt for bringing them to the forum once again.

Please continue to make them. It reinforces the point I've made for many an eon now that some users do grow beyond the 'L' plate stage and start wanting to put their foot down on the race track ... only to find that there's a rev limiter fitted, the clutch is slipping, third gear isn't working, there's no footbrake and somebody thinks a wooden tiller is an adequate stand-in for a multi-function steering wheel <choose your own feature requests to fit, eg the clumsy, mandraulic method of creating animations instead of a programmatically-controlled live animation for the tiller/steering-wheel analogy>.

... anyway, it's not your tardiness that's at issue here.

Stuart

In the UK, learner drivers have to put an sign with an 'L' on it on their car to indicate that the vehicle has a learner undergoing tuition. Newly qualified drivers are encouraged to put a 'P' (for probationary) plate on for the first year to indicate that they have a legitimate reason for not having a scooby what's going on.

[RichardJ]

Steering wheels? We're still stuck with two dimensional vehicles such as bicycles and motorbikes. I think it was suggested some time ago that allowing more than two dimensions means all sorts of interesting vehicles could be built. If you made the vehicle three dimensional you could have four wheels, and then you could put a big box on the back to carry things. Mathematica, Maple, and Matlab all have them. They are called "trucks" (or "lorries" in the UK version).

[StuartBruff]

Richard Jackson wrote:

Steering wheels? We're still stuck with two dimensional vehicles such as bicycles and motorbikes.

Hmm.

I think it was suggested some time ago that allowing more than two dimensions means all sorts of interesting vehicles could be built. If you made the vehicle three dimensional you could have four wheels, and then you could put a big box on the back to carry things. Mathematica, Maple, and Matlab all have them. They are called "trucks" (or "lorries" in the UK version).

I think we need to think outside of that box and see where those extra dimensions could lead us ...

or even ...

[HarveyHensley]

Mona,

This discussion should be moved to Enhancing Mathcad. Maybe if these long standing requests get collected in one spot they might actually produce some results..

[StuartBruff]

Harvey Hensley wrote:

Mona,

This discussion should be moved to Enhancing Mathcad. Maybe if these long standing requests get collected in one spot they might actually produce some results..

There have been at least half a dozen PTC/Mathsoft initiated attempts to collect feature requests into one place. At least three of the user-input threads to these attempts have slipped into the oblivion reserved for old, unsupported databases (ie,the Collaboratories). We shouldn't be having this conversation, because PTC/Mathsoft should have sorted the unit system out properly at least 5 years ago - certainly, as major as rewrite as Prime should have been a lot smarter than what amounts to little more than a resurrection of Mathcad 11's dynamic type checking.

Valery's example below is a good example of why a quantity tracking system is preferable to the dimension tracking system in place at the moment. Dimensionless quantities (ie, quantities of dimension 1) are indistinguishable from each other and allow such things as adding bits to bytes and angles to solid angles - thus obviating the advantages of a "unit" tracking system. One way round this is allow the user to define the quantity that is associated with each unit (and, yes, just like money, that will form a new base quantity in the Mathcad System of Quantities if it's of dimension one and not a derived quantity).

I do not get the impression that feature request take-ups (or the little I have seen about the Mathcad Prime roadmap) are determined by people who grok Mathcad from the point of view of an experienced user.

Stuart

(grok ... now there's a word I haven't come across for some time)

[ValeryOchkov]

One (crazy) idea in Mole day (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mole_Day)

And what about this unit of Substance:

[ValeryOchkov]

I think it may be the main additional in Units in Mathcad Prime 3.0

(See also - http://communities.ptc.com/docs/DOC-2152)

[JohnDoe]

dBm (i.e dB_milliwatt), dBmV (i.e dB_millivolt) and dBµV (i.e dB_microvolt: 100 dBµV = 100 mV) are very much used in the field of electrical engineering. Please add them to Mathcad Prime 3.0 it will be good news for many electrical engineers!

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBm

and please again do not forget nanohenry ( 1 nH = 10^-9 Henry).

[VladimirN]

John,

You can bring this proposal in "Mathcad Prime 3.0 Discussion": http://communities.ptc.com/groups/mathcad-prime-30-discussion

[JohnDoe]

Unfortunately this is a private thread. I applied for admission but got no answer. Perhaps you be so kind an post this suggestion there for me.

Another suggestion is concerning the pull-down list of units: it would be much more comfortable to press "R" to go directly to "Resistance" instead of scrolling down all the way there.

[Werner_E]

Another suggestion is concerning the pull-down list of units: it would be much more comfortable to press "R" to go directly to "Resistance" instead of scrolling down all the way there.

As we already have it in mathcad 15!

PTC developed Prime to make it more user friendly and intuitive - really??

[ELSID]

I disagree to. dB is a scale, NOT a unit. I had a discussion of how to implement this with Tom Gutman several years ago. There is also a couple of discussions in the Electrical forum.

I can see PTC implementing "scales" area to augment "units". In this case, they can define a dB and the user then "define" their base.

I use dB all the time, but dBA and dB(A) can may or may NOT mean the same thing. To me, it's dB with the "A" weight factor ... to someone else, it could be dB Amps!

It's like asking PTC to implement log, but the base in dB jumps around

[Anousheh]

Hello,

Inclusions of units of some parameters in the field of FRACTURE MECHANICS would be nice:

Stress Intensity Factor (K) => N/m^3/2 OR Pa square-root of m OR Ksi square-root of in

J Integral (J) => J/m^2

Thank you,

Anousheh

[ValeryOchkov]

It will be good to work with units on the counter (and surface) plot in Mathcad Prime 3.0.

Now I must do so - m (meter):=1