Are Prime 4 worksheet add-ons used like MC 15 ebooks?

[David_A]

When I got Prime 4 I also bought one of the worksheet add-ons, but cannot find a way to access them within the program other than directly opening the document like I would a file I'm working on. Is there ebook functionality to the use of worksheets like there is in MC 15 where they are part of the help system and may be viewed alongside your working document in a separate window? Or capability close to this? If not, what is the intended approach for their use? (I'm use to MC v14 handbooks and quicksheets and wondering if that functionality is reproduced in any fashion in Prime 4).

TIA

David

[Werner_E]

I don't know what a worksheet add-on for Prime is, but as far as I know there is nothing comparable to Mathcads E-Books implemented in Prime.

[tietjee]

I contacted PTC on whether eBooks was going to be included in Prime 5.  The support staff I talked to did not know what eBooks is.  I have added as a recommended feature.  You vote for it, but I am not sure where the recommended features are located.  PTC claims that Prime 5 will have all the features of MC15.  We will have to see.

[Werner_E]

David Tietje wrote:

I contacted PTC on whether eBooks was going to be included in Prime 5.  The support staff I talked to did not know what eBooks is.

Surprise?!

PTC claims that Prime 5 will have all the features of MC15.

The already claimed that for version 3.0 when they launched Prime 1 and I found that very strange then as I would have expected Prime 1 to be at least as powerful as Mathcad 15. Of course in the meantime we know why they still give you Mathcad 15 along with Prime - one program to play with and to wonder how slow and cumbersome tu use a modern program can be, and the other to do real work with.

I don't think that Prime will ever have all the features we were used from Mathcad as PTC sure has a new target group of customers in mind which will not miss features they aren't aware that they existed.

[David_A · Accepted solution]

I'm not sure if you are aware, I found article CS200084 (see link below), and according to it, there is facility (conversion of documents to Prime format + VBS scripts to build linked HTML pages) to convert Mathcad 15 (and earlier) eBooks into HTML hyperlinked documents that automatically open in Mathcad Prime. The article describes the 8+ extension packs that came with various older versions of Mathcad (15, 14, 13, 12, etc.) that included "Topics in Electrical Engineering", "Finite Element Beginnings" (Febeg.hbk), "Building Thermal Analysis" (Thermal.hbk), "Building Structural Design" (Structur.hbk), "Roarks formulas for Stress and Strain" (Roarks.hbk), "Machine Design and Analysis" (Hicks1.hbk), "Electrical and Electronics Engineering" (Hicks2.hbk) and "Electrical Power Systems Engineering" (Power.hbk). It also says the scripts are easily adaptable to any custom eBooks. I haven't tried the process yet, so cannot comment on how successful or effective it is.

Although there is still the HUGE loss of the live math interface of eBooks and the ability to annotate them, and copy information from them directly into Mathcad, at least there is a simple way to access the information and preserve some of their value. Check out the link below for a Word doc explaining the process and a link to the required scripts. Meanwhile, I've attached a screenshot of the result (from the link below).screenshot.JPG

BTW, I voted for the eBook suggestion for Prime 5 (there were only 6 votes including mine ).

The link to all this information is here:

https://support.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?n=CS200084

David

[Fred_Kohlhepp]

Thanks for the link!

[LucMeekes]

The link is OK, but then you have to log on and it appears one needs "sufficient privileges" to access the material....

Luc

[VladimirN]

Luc,

Please, find in the attachment PDF file with the contents of this web page. And related links:

https://community.ptc.com/t5/PTC-Mathcad/How-HNDBK-E-book-quot-Roarks-quot-can-be-read-or-converted-as/m-p/77732#458894

https://community.ptc.com/t5/PTC-Mathcad/MathCAD-Prime-3-0-Roark-Toolkit-possible/m-p/419359#407238

https://community.ptc.com/t5/PTC-Mathcad-Ideas/eBooks-in-Prime-5-0/idi-p/465440

[LucMeekes]

Thanks.

[David_A]

The scripts needed also.

[VladimirN]

Already has in links from my message above.

[tietjee]

David,

I have been a big user of ebooks for documentation and presentation of results.  The program I use has pre-possessing input, processing and post- processing.  Ebooks allows the tracking of design changes, which have to be kept.  Each design change and result has it's own sub-folder.  As the design progresses, the table of contents is expanded, the hand book revised, programs tracked to be used as reference files, etc.  Ebooks provides the following capabilities:

     Linked Table of Contents

     Checks for missing links.  Technical support does not fulling know how to resolve some of the error messages

     Calculation errors

     Previous and next section

     Search capability, Takes some practice to setup.

You can see the advantages of having eBooks.  I think PTC thinks it is a nicety.

I have not used Prime for several reasons and not sure if Prime 5 will support all my requirements.  But I do have a question.  Will the eBook translator handle sub-folders?  My guess it will not.  The program provided by PTC has to be modified for each eBook.  It is not clear to me if sub-folders can be included in the program.  The result may not be usable any way.

Any suggestions would be appreciated, since we are headed to Prime 5, 6, etc.

David Tg

[David_A]

Thanks for your responses. I feared as much. From what I can tell, Prime 4 isn't really up to snuff compared to MC 13, 14 or 15. Certainly it has new features that they don't have, but functionality is diminished significantly. I'm beginning to regret the purchase. Promises that Prime 5 will have all the features of MC 15 are weak at best. Prime 5 should surpass MC 15. Was not Prime 1 and "upgrade" from MC 15? Yet we still haven't made it to the full feature set of MC15 even by version 4, years later.

Sorry for the rant. Just very disappointed and do not see how this version of the product is worth what they charge.

PS: Werner, if you go to the store and act as if you're trying to purchase MC, you'll see Worksheets that are offered for sale as well. When I bought the set (I think it was Applied Math), I thought it was the equivalent of ebooks found in MC v11,12, 13, 14, 15 since Prime was an "upgrade". The chief feature I liked was the lookup capability without disturbing my current worksheet, the ability to drag and drop items from the ebook into my worksheet and the ability to do live math in the ebook without changing it (oh, and the ability to notate it as well). That's a lot of loss.

Thanks

David

[Werner_E]

David Allen wrote:

From what I can tell, Prime 4 isn't really up to snuff compared to MC 13, 14 or 15.

You are not alone and in good company with that opinion.

Was not Prime 1 and "upgrade" from MC 15?

No, Prime 1 was just a joke. And strange enough it was not intended to replace Mathcad - PTC promised Prime 3 to include all Mathcad 15 features. Nevertheless they took good money for Prime 1.

PS: Werner, if you go to the store and act as if you're trying to purchase MC, you'll see Worksheets that are offered for sale as well. When I bought the set (I think it was Applied Math), I thought it was the equivalent of ebooks found in MC v11,12, 13, 14, 15 since Prime was an "upgrade".

Guess you just bought a couple of standalone worksheets.

[RichardJ]

Thanks for your responses. I feared as much. From what I can tell, Prime 4 isn't really up to snuff compared to MC 13, 14 or 15.

Or 8.

Promises that Prime 5 will have all the features of MC 15 are weak at best.

Given the development rate so far, I will bet any amount of money you like that Prime 5 will not have all the features of MC15.

I'm beginning to regret the purchase

Change the way you are thinking about it. You purchased MC15, and got Prime for free.

[David_A]

Great positive thought, except that there really is no future for MC 15, and in some ways, when you look at v13, even it is crippled in some capabilities. I cannot recall. Was it Mathsoft or PTC that made the decision to abandon the Maple engine in favor of Mupad? Seems like v14 was the first release by PTC, and the first release with Mupad as the symbolics engine. There might be a clue there.

[LucMeekes]

I think Mathsoft was already developing Mathcad 14 when it was taken over by PTC. Taking it to the market was under the PTC umbrella for sure.

"when you look at v13, even it is crippled in some capabilities".

In many respects there's no match for Mathcad 11 yet. If you have it (still running), hold on to it !

Luc

[glardner]

I realise this is not really the place to ask, but do you know if it is possible to install and use Mathcad 11, or indeed any of the pre-PTC versions, alongside MC15? I think I probably still have the old Mathsoft licences back to MC 2001i on old backup tapes. And yes, I know we're not supposed to do it under the terms of the PTC license, but just asking...

[LucMeekes]

Installing Mathcad 15 removes 14, but not 11. I guess installing 14 would remove 15, or cause other trouble; but there's no advantage of 14 over 15 so why try...

That is different with 11: I think you should be able to install Mathcad 11 on a machine where 15 is running without ruining 15.

Whether you get it running or not depends on the type of 11 and the OS. If you have a single user 11, it is protected by Cdilla that tries to install a kernel mode driver. This will fail (but you have to search well to find the failure message) in Win7 and up 64-bit OS's (WinXP 64-bit allows it). On a 32-bit OS (Win95 and up to Win10) it should install OK, but you will not be able to register (that is: keep it running for more than the 15 days trial period) because PTC has pulled that support.

There exists a Mathcad 11 edition that is protected with FlexLM. That should install and run (at least the trial period) in both 32 and 64 bit OS. Don't know if you can still register it.

For 2001i the advantage is that you can register it against the (original !) CD that it was shipped on. But the protection uses Cdilla, so you can only successfully do that on a 32-bit OS (or 64-bit WinXP)

Older versions had no protection at all. They should install and run, albeit sometimes with a weird problem. I seem to remember that Mathcad 6 on Win7 refuses to save or so.

Success!
Luc

PS. With a 64-bit OS (Win7 and up) you can on most computers create a virtual machine, where you can have WinXP and in there Cdilla works.

[RichardJ]

Whether or not you are allowed to install other versions in parallel depends on whether you have independent licenses for them, or upgrade licenses.

11, 12, 13, and either 14 or 15 (but not both; they are really the same version) were designed to run in parallel, and will do so with no conflicts. They may conflict with earlier versions though.

All of which is moot, because on Windows 10 you can't install them, and even if you could the license server no longer exists for 11 or 12 or 13, so you can't activate them. I think versions prior to 11 have 16 bit installers, so they can't be installed on Windows 8 or 10. You could install them in XP mode on Windows 7. I forget what their licensing requirements are though.

[LucMeekes]

"...because on Windows 10 you can't install them..."

That is certainly true for Mathcad versions 6 and before, on 64-bit systems...

Mathcad 2000 on Windows 10 64-bit installs and runs. Here's the proof:

As said. 2001i should install, and be capable to run on Windows 10 32-bit.

Luc

[RichardJ]

Interesting. I have my version 2000 disks, but they are an upgrade, so 8 would also need to install.

[glardner]

Hmm. At present it's only Windows 7 X64 I'm concerned with. I think the versions of Mathcad I have at home from v11 and earlier have FlexLM license files; my copy of v2001i was indeed licenced against a CD. Which, if any, of the Mathsoft versions might still work? Must try sometime.

[RichardJ]

Mathcad 11 definitely requires a license server, which no longer exists. I think 2000 just requires a product code. I'm not sure about 2001 and 2001i.

[LucMeekes]

Mathcad 2000 just requires a product code.

Mathcad 2001i 'activation' requires the CD it came on. The protection uses Cdilla that will not be allowed by Win7,8 or 10 64 bit, but you could setup a vertual machine running XP within Win7 64 bit and install it in there.

Or, you must be really lucky and are allowed choose the FlexLM protection AND to 'activate' that for 2001i using the CD...

Success!
Luc

[LucMeekes]

Mathcad 2001i installs on a win7/32 bit machine. Initially the program will tell you upon launch that it cannot be run on this OS (error code 1611).

But you can tell Win7 to run it under WinXP sp2 compaitibility mode. Then it's time to find the original CD that the program came on. The validation of the 'correct CD' uses the knowledge of a bad spot on that CD.

During installation I did not come across a choice between FlexLM and Cdilla, unfortunately. And there's no 15 days trial period either .

Luc

[RichardJ]

It was Mathsoft, but my understanding is that it was not entirely their decision. The right to use the maple engine was taken away. I'm not certain of that, but I think it was the case.

[David_A]

I wondered if that was the case. Since Maple might then have been considering becoming a directly competing product, they might have ended the agreement. Too bad. And do we know if there is a newer version of Mupad that even exists? (never mind whether PTC will pursue integrating it). I read somewhere in this forum that the Mupad engine in MC 15 is old (2012-ish).

[RichardJ]

Maple was a competing product long before the symbolic engine was replaced in Mathcad. Mathsoft made a mistake in the way they implemented a feature related to symbolic math, which gave Maple the ammunition they needed to terminate the agreement.

Mupad was purchased by Mathworks, the owners of Matlab. I think it is unlikely they would offer e newer engine to PTC. 

[Fred_Kohlhepp]

You can view two Prime worksheets side by side; you launch a second Prime session.

If you have a MC 15 session going and download a MC 15 sheet (from this forum) and double-click to open it, your MC15 session opens it as a second window in the running session.  Prime, when confronted by the same issue, opens a new session (no second tab under the menu bar.)  So, you can have multiple sheets open side by side--if you have the computer resources required.