Goodbye Mathcad!

[EdwinV]

Mathcad was a pretty good tool. A quick and practical way to do your engineering calculations. That was version 9 way back and still my most used version. After that things didn't change much and together with some minor improvements, some issues came into being as well. I suppose their was no profit in leaving a program that worked just be what it was and so Prime came into being. And what a piece of junk it was. Slow, cumbersome and either lacking important functionality or simply not doing what it should.

Now on version 5 things should have been better. I mean, after eight years enough people should have complained that it didn't work. Right? Yeah. Too much to hope for. It's still slow, UI is still a mess, you can't comfortably input your work quickly and key features that worked fine as far back as Mathcad 9 still fail miserably.

As is the case with many programs, if any of the developer would actually have to use their own program for actual work, they would have known how bad it really is. I have no hope left that it will ever become usable. Which means that Mathcad is now dead. So goodbye Mathcad, it was nice knowing you.

I'll leave you with this image of my 10 minute random experiment of MP5, after which I finally had to give up on it.

[gfraulini]

I use MathCad Prime since one year. Previously I used MC 15.
I'm a mechanical engineer and I've not the necessity to have a lot of particularly functions, but I use very often graphs and the main difference between MC before/after Prime, is that you have to specify the function dominio (with units) BEFORE you add the graph.

In my opinion, the new way is better.

Bye

[DJF]

I don't think I disagree with anything you've said.  But I still use it as it is the best available tool for most of my jobs.  I'd think Maple is probably the best overall, but I don't have access.  

That said, all you need is a range variable defining x to make your plot.  In some cases MC will default to -10 to +10 but sometimes it doesn't.  I know in other threads this was pointed out as a bug.  But I pretty much define a range every time I plot.

[gfraulini]

If you don't use units you can make a plot witout a previous dominio specification. Otherwise, with units, you must specify the dominio with units.

[rgunwaldsen]

I think my opinions line up well with those of DJF. I have been a Mathcad user since the 5 1/4 inch floppy days of Windows 3.1. I lament the loss of functionality from Mathcad 11, particularly the loss of animation. I wish the symbolics were as good as with the Maple engine, and I worry about the future given that Mupad is owned by the Matlab folks. I decry the lack of progress in the "development" of Prime, and I wish that Mathcad had been purchased by someone/anyone other than PTC.

That said, I have always loved the white board interface and its self-documenting nature. It is still a great tool for quick design of prototype concepts. And I first go to Prime 5 before Mathcad 15. And, like DFJ, I define range variables with units prior to plotting.

Finally, I find it odd that a user of Mathcad 9 would give up on a new tool after 10 minutes.

[gfraulini]

I think PTC wants to change the market of Mathcad from a competitor of Maple and Mathematica (basic graphic and much mathematical functions) to a more "engineer" software. But "engineer" intended like a tool for professionals and for CAD designers where you don't have very particular necessities (writing design relations) and where you have the integration with CAD (I use the integration with Creo 3 - MP4 and I found it useful).
In my opinion this road is very clear.

[Fred_Kohlhepp]

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@gfraulini wrote:

I think PTC wants to change the market of Mathcad from a competitor of Maple and Mathematica (basic graphic and much mathematical functions) to a more "engineer" software. But "engineer" intended like a tool for professionals and for CAD designers where you don't have very particular necessities (writing design relations) and where you have the integration with CAD (I use the integration with Creo 3 - MP4 and I found it useful).
In my opinion this road is very clear.

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I believe you're right.  But (as a designing engineer) I've used Mathcad as an analysis/design tool for a long time, and seeing

• the absolute rape that was Prime 1.0,
• and the glacial speed of the improvements,
• and the slipped schedules,
• and the broken promises,
• and the absolute lack of knowledgeable support

is very depressing.  Like many old users I kept Mathcad 15 as well as Prime on the computer not just to translate old files forward.

[Werner_E]

I agree that Prime is a piece of junk which probably would never be developed to live up to the more than 10 year old Mathcad 15 and I also agree that it would be be an unforgivable mistake to recommend a young engineer to learn and use Mathcad or Prime.

But to be fair it must be said that the problem in the plot example you showed sure is not a reason for bashing Prime (there are countless other reasons to do so, though).

Your plot example would fail in good old Mathcad 15 and below as well and it just shows a misunderstanding of Mathcads/Primes quickplot feature. This feature where you do not have to define the variable on the abscissa only works for dimensionless abscissa variables. No change from old Mathcad to Prime.

So to get the plot you expect you may either define the abscissa variable (possibly as a range with unit) or use the dimensionless variable provided by the quickplot feature and assign it the needed unit when calling the function to plot by writing B(x*mm) in the ordinate placeholder (this was shown by @gfraulini for Mathcad and it works the very same way in Prime).

So you may blame PTC for not improving the quickplot feature to work with units, too, but in this case you can't blame them for making things worse than they used to be. Prime is so much worse than Mathcad in so many other cases but not in this one.

[ValeryOchkov]

Sorry, but...

THE FOX AND THE GRAPES

A Fox one day spied a beautiful bunch of ripe grapes hanging from a vine trained along the branches of a tree. The grapes seemed ready to burst with juice, and the Fox's mouth watered as he gazed longingly at them.

The bunch hung from a high branch, and the Fox had to jump for it. The first time he jumped he missed it by a long way. So he walked off a short distance and took a running leap at it, only to fall short once more. Again and again he tried, but in vain.

Now he sat down and looked at the grapes in disgust.

"What a fool I am," he said. "Here I am wearing myself out to get a bunch of sour grapes that are not worth gaping for."

[Werner_E]

Sorry, but you either misunderstood my post and the criticism of Prime or you misunderstood the story about the fox and the grapes.

[ValeryOchkov]

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@Werner_E wrote:

Sorry, but you either misunderstood my post and the criticism of Prime or you misunderstood the story about the fox and the grapes.

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Sorry, it was my reply to the start message of this branch of the community!

[Fred_Kohlhepp]

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@ValeryOchkov wrote:

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@Werner_E wrote:

Sorry, but you either misunderstood my post and the criticism of Prime or you misunderstood the story about the fox and the grapes.

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Sorry, it was my reply to the start message of this branch of the community!

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And my point (looking at the starting post) is that the fox got the grapes (the poster has tried Prime 5.0) and the grapes are sour.  

[RichardJ]

The Vain Jackdaw & his Borrowed Feathers

 

A Jackdaw chanced to fly over the garden of the King's palace. There he saw with much wonder and envy a flock of royal Peacocks in all the glory of their splendid plumage.

Now the black Jackdaw was not a very handsome bird, nor very refined in manner. Yet he imagined that all he needed to make himself fit for the society of the Peacocks was a dress like theirs. So he picked up some castoff feathers of the Peacocks and stuck them among his own black plumes.

Dressed in his borrowed finery he strutted loftily among the birds of his own kind. Then he flew down into the garden among the Peacocks. But they soon saw who he was. Angry at the cheat, they flew at him, plucking away the borrowed feathers and also some of his own.

The poor Jackdaw returned sadly to his former companions. There another unpleasant surprise awaited him. They had not forgotten his superior airs toward them, and, to punish him, they drove him away with a rain of pecks and jeers.

Borrowed feathers do not make fine birds.

[Fred_Kohlhepp]

very apt!

[Fred_Kohlhepp]

Yes, but the grapes ARE sour!

[Werner_E]

True, Prime sure can't  equate Prime with a bunch of ripe, juicy grapes - by far not