How to convert XMCD file into MCDX format?

[dkothia]

The file is from Mathsoft MathCad, but I want to run it in the new PTC MathCad what is the solution please answer ASAP. And are the two software same?

[Fred_Kohlhepp]

If you're in a hurry then you should develop the capability yourself.  Download Mathcad 15.  You can then import the files yourself using the translator program in Prime.

Those of us past version three (that means 3.1, 4, and 5) cannot translate a program into version 3, so you're looking for a fairly restricted member set.

[SimonS]

Hi!

Could you please convert folowing to Mathcad Prime 3.0?

[VladimirN]

Please find it in attachment.

[ValeryOchkov]

One my student has a little business - the manual converting Prime files to MC15.

Click this button and open a dialog box with e-mail of this student!

Thanks to PTC!

[JanDidden]

Hello Valery,

I have a bunch of MC15 worksheets I need to convert to P{rime 1.0. Unfortunately, my MC15 refuses to run on my W10 (another investment down the drain) and keeps complaining that my XP doesn't have SP3???

I'm OK with your student a little business but have no idea how to contact him, you say 'click this button' I don't see any button. Can you help please?

Jan Didden

[Werner_E]

Prime 1.0 sure is a version nobody should use. Its far too much limited and buggy!

So I doubt that anybody here has installed Prime 1 and would be able to do the conversions as higher versions of Prime still are not able to save in older version Prime formats.

Even the current Prime 5 is far behind good old Mathcad 15 but at least usable to some extent.

Mathcad 15 sure should run OK on Win10 - it does for me and also for a lot of others here in the forum.

Do you have installed the latest maintenance release of Mathcad 15? Its M050.

It should run using the license file you are using now (just save that in a safe place before doing any reinstallation) and you can get the current version somewhere here:

https://www.ptc.com/en/products/mathcad/free-trial/thank-you
https://www.ptc.com/en/products/mathcad/free-trial
http://download.ptc.com/products/mathcad/trial/mc15/Mathcad15_EN.zip
https://www.ptc.com/-/media/Files/Docs/Mathcad/Mathcad15-EN.zip

[JanDidden]

Werner thank you very much, it indeed does install correctly on W10! My
error was to try to install from the 2012 CD from before even W7 I think....
You live and learn.

Thanks again, Happy New Year!

Jan

[JanDidden]

Werner thank you very much, it indeed does install correctly on W10! My error was to try to install from the 2012 CD from before even W7 I think....

You live and learn.

Thanks again, Happy New Year!

Jan

[saouma]

I am teaching a course and need to convert an old xmcd file to mcd, could you help?

Thanks

victor saouma

Univ. of Colorado

[Werner_E]

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@saouma wrote:

I am teaching a course and need to convert an old xmcd file to mcd, could you help?

Thanks

victor saouma

Univ. of Colorado

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You should state which version of Prime you are using as it would not be helpful for you if you are using Prime 4 and someone converts the file to Prime 5 for you.

And then you always can install Mathcad 15 on your machine and do the conversion yourself.

If you are entitled to use Prime you are also entitled to use Mathcad 15. MC15 will happily use the same license file as your Prime installation.

You find download links here -> https://community.ptc.com/t5/PTC-Mathcad/How-to-convert-XMCD-file-into-MCDX-format/m-p/586710/highlight/true#M183975

[Werner_E]

Here is what the P5 converter made from your file. It sure will require some post processing and rework.

[saouma]

Thank you, but could you please explain to me what is the difference between mcd and mcdx?

My students are prevailing themselves from the "student" version MathCad Express, can it only read one format but not the other?

On the other hand our Dept has a full license, and seems unable to generate mcdx file.

[Fred_Kohlhepp]

**.mcd files are "original mathcad" files from an old version.  Any Mathcad (version 15 is current) not Prime should be able to open them.  

**.xmcd files are also "original mathcad" files but from a more recent version.  (Open an **.mcd file in version 15 and it will open properly; save it and it will save as **.xmcd.

Then came Prime!

**.mcdx files are Mathcad Prime.  There are versions 1, 2, 3, 3.1, 4, and 5.

Version 5 should be able to read any **.mcdx file.  Version 4 can read any earlier version but cannot read a version 5 file.  No Prime can read a file from "original mathcad."  There is a converter that comes with Prime; it requires a functional copy of  Mathcad 15 be installed and useable on the same computer.  It will interpret the old file and attempt (often very poorly) to create a Prime version.  A full license of Prime entitles a copy of Mathcad 15 be installed on the computer and will run under the same license.

Prime Express is a limited free version of Prime.  (A trial version of Prime will be fully functional for 30 days, then become Express.  The original Prime file can be seen, but once it's modified a lot of things will no longer work.

[Werner_E]

I may add that Mathcad (that is version 15 and below) can of course read any file from any older version (even from the DOS era I guess) and MC15 is at least able to save in older formats back to MC11.

Prime is lacking such abilities. Any version of Prime should read any Prime file created with it or any earlier version but its not able to read files in format Mathcad 15 or below.

Furthermore there is no way a file in format Prime 5 for example could be saved or converted to older versions format - not to Prime 4, not to real Mathcad 15 or below. That's pretty amateurish but thats the way PTC has decided(?) it to be.

BTW, you can also install Mathcad 15 and it will work with full functionality (including the ability to convert older sheets to Prime format) for 30 days. After that trial period it stops working (while Prime false back to the limited Express mode).

So your students may use the trial periods of Mathcad 15  and Prime to be able to convert older worksheets on their own.

Short version 😉 :

> My students are prevailing themselves from the "student" version MathCad Express, can it only read one format but not the other?

Their Prime Express (I assume current version 5) is able to read any file created with Prime 5 down to Prime 1 (*.mcdx), but it will not read files created by real Mathcad (Mathcad 15 or below, *.mcd, *,xmcd, *.xmcdz).

> On the other hand our Dept has a full license, and seems unable to generate mcdx file.

A full license of which software? If its a license for Prime its also valid for Mathcad 15. As your file is in older Mathcad format, you either have only a license for real Mathcad or, more likely, you own a license for the current Prime but have only installed the older (and better) Mathcad (presumably version 15).

In the latter case you can additionally install Prime 5 using the same license. *.mcdx files can only be created with Prime.

[saouma]

SO, there is

MathCad

MathCad Prime

MathCad Express

In decreasing order of functionality (why the hell call it Prime if it is less "powerful" than the regular one.



In terms of my usage:



1. I am forcing my students<> to use MathCad, they have downloaded the Epxress version. I told them not to get spoiled by it as soon it will revert to MathCad Expree with limited functionality.

2. I have tried to rejuvenate an old file for me to give to the students (the file I sent you). Your conversion came back as very buggy when opened with Prime. I am not sure if it would have read properly from the regular version.



Just trying to get to the bottom of this, convince myself that I am not wasting my (and student time) with MathCad, and then try to convince my colleague that this may (or may not) be the way to ge.

[LucMeekes]

A little more background.

PTC acquired Mathsoft (and with that: Mathcad) over 10 years ago. Very soon after that, they decided that Mathcad-as-we-knew-it was not the way to go. They started development of 'Mathcad Prime'. Prime brought a few improvements over Mathcad. I can think of three:

1. Mixed units in vectors & matrices,

2. Automatic variable/unit/function/constant labelling (though brings some problems every now and then),

3. Prime express. You get to use a limited version of the full Prime for free, for ever (PTC promise).

However Prime results in an enormous penalty in speed (starts slow, equation entering is slow, calculation is slow), functionality (lacking features that Mathcad had) and price (you get to pay a yearly subscription, you cannot get a perpetual license for a lifetime anymore). Some bugs reported for Prime 3.1 are still not fixed.

In over 10 years, PTC have managed to bring out 5 'major releases' of Prime, where the new features included with each release got smaller over time. I've seen PTC promising more than it actually delivers, and it spits out later than it promises. The difference between Prime 5 and 4 is a third-party 2D plotting tool that uses a different paradigm compared to the 'native' plotting tool.

If you want a luxury numerical calculator, with reasonable 2D plotting facility, then Prime Express is OK. Do not expect symbolics, programming, solve blocks (for solving sets of equations or numerically solving differential equations), or really fancy mathematical functions such as: the Gamma function, Re and Im to get real and imaginary parts of complex values, mean (average of the elements of a vector), stdev, and many other statistical functions to name a few.

Personally I think that students, and especially in technical disciplines, should get to know tools like Mathcad during their education so that they know it exists, and what kind of possibilities they can expect from such tools. (I think that graphical calculator devices are old-fashioned.). Mathcad (yes, Prime too) is the tool with the lowest learning curve compared to Mathematica and Maple (and I don't compare it to Matlab, because that is a programming language). There's one other potential alternative: Smath Studio, free and much like Mathcad. It can even read Mathcad 15 files...to some extent. Your's is too complicated.

Success!
Luc

[Apei]

1. do not understand why the company change the format again and again. this is the second time they change

2. and the import function does not wok, which needs Mathcad 15. However mathcad 15 cannot be installed in my window 10. 

feel very disappointed with this. 

[Fred_Kohlhepp]

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@Apei wrote:

 However mathcad 15 cannot be installedin my window 10. 

feel very disappointed with this. 

---

Mathcad 15 will install and work in Windows 10.  There have been a few issues, but it can be done.

[LucMeekes]

1.

To "understand why the company change the format again and again" you have to be PTC. We, users generally frequenting this forum, aren't PTC. We can only guess: Is it to force users to always use the latest version of the software? Is it because that, in combination with a subscription model of payment, can generate substantial income for PTC?

2.

As Fred wrote, Mathcad 15 should install and run fine on Windows 10.

Where lies your problem: Cannot get through the install? Does the install seem to run fine, but the application will not launch? The application will launch, but crash while actually using it?

I suggest you search this forum for Instal lation  prob lems, to see if it is already solved. If that doesn't help, open a new item with your problem. We may be able to help you solve it.

Success!
Luc

[Werner_E]

And additionally to what Fred and Luc wrote, you should try to install the latest release of Mathcad 15.

You can download the current trial version of Mathcad 15 and then point it to your existing license file.

You can download MC15 somewhere here:

https://www.ptc.com/en/products/mathcad/free-trial/thank-you
https://www.ptc.com/en/products/mathcad/free-trial
http://download.ptc.com/products/mathcad/trial/mc15/Mathcad15_EN.zip
https://www.ptc.com/-/media/Files/Docs/Mathcad/Mathcad15-EN.zip

BTW, you are not the only one being disappointed by the way PTC handles Mathcad.

[RichardJ]

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@saouma wrote:
SO, there is

MathCad

MathCad Prime

MathCad Express

In decreasing order of functionality (why the hell call it Prime if it is less "powerful" than the regular one.

---

Because PTC think that their version of Mathcad, Mathcad Prime, is better than the version developed by Mathsoft (which they purchased), everything up to and including Mathcad 15. Almost everybody that uses the Mathsoft version disagrees. There are a few things Prime does that 15 does not (e.g. mixed units in arrays), but overall it is much less capable. PTC also wants to force everyone to upgrade, even if they don't need the new capabilities, which is why a later version cannot save to an earlier version format. To be certain that you are really forced into that, now you can only get Prime on a subscription basis, so if you don't pay every year you lose access to your own work. A sort of legal ransomware. That was really the last straw for me, and I gave up on Mathcad. That's why I dropped out of sight here (apart from a very occasional appearance, like now).

I now use SMath Studio (SMath Studio) when possible, which has an interface that is very similar to Mathcad, and revert to Mathcad 15 if I need to do something it can't handle. It's not as powerful as Mathcad 15, but it's a lot more powerful than Mathcad Prime Express (in particular, it can do symbolic math, as well as a number of other things that were deliberately crippled in Express). I would say that it's a toss up when compared to Prime. In some respects it's better then Prime, in other respects it's worse. It can read some Mathcad files, but only .xmcd format (which you can create from .xmcdz by renaming it to .zip, unzipping it, and renaming it to .xmcd), and unfortunately, not your example. It is completely free. And, you can now get it on Android and iPhone! Take that, PTC! I haven't played with the Android version much yet, but it certainly beats Mathcad on Andoid, because that doesn't exist at all!

[Werner_E]

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2. I have tried to rejuvenate an old file for me to give to the students (the file I sent you). Your conversion came back as very buggy when opened with Prime. I am not sure if it would have read properly from the regular version.

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The version you sent looked quite OK in Mathcad 15.

The red lines and arrows you see in the converted file are just annotations inserted by the converted indicating that here and there things may look different than they used to look in Mathcad. You can delete those annotation via the menu (Input/output - delete annotations).

The converter is known to fail when it comes to headers an footers and you will have to rebuild them on your own with the limited possibilities in Prime.

Furthermore the converter in no way respects the page sizes so its normal for the converter to make pagebreaks in the wild and you will have a lot of fun to repair that manually.

Worst of all as you may already have noticed is that the converter just inserts a picture of the original math region if the function is not available in Prime (like the gradient operator) or the syntax is not supported (like in some of your matrix multiplications).

Thats all what I was talking about when I wrote that the file would need some post processing and rework. Admittedly the "some" was a big understatement.

IMHO you should not expose your students to Prime Express or Mathcad. Mathcad as we know it will not be supported anymore sooner or later and Prime will never live up to a useful tool for engineers the next decades as the "development" so far has shown.
So if the very limited Prime Express looks useful to you - use it, but you may want to rather give SMath Studio a try, after all its free.

And then you may have a look what tools the companies your students will go to are using - maybe you'll end up with MatLab and/or Maple, maybe with something else.

P.S.: I attach a PDF print of the original file you posted just to show that it looked OK in Mathcad 15,

[b35bb4]

Hi guys! Can you help me to convert this mathcad 15 file to mathcad prime 4 format?

[LucMeekes]

While the conversion of this sheet to Prime 4 may work, I think you will be left with some problems.

I see that the sheet references a WaterSteamPro .mcd sheet that would also need to be converted.

I can't open that referenced sheet. It's not accessible (by me) at the indicated location (it may be for you).

I suggest you contact ValeryOchkov to find out if it would work at all.

Success!
Luc

[b35bb4]

Yeah maybe it's about waterstream pro. I'm on it. Thanks for suggestion!

[VladimirN]

Here it is.

[b35bb4]

Thanks man works perfectly! So that was about the location @LucMeekes 

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[peyman]

Can you ples

ase convert my xmcd file to mcdx?

Thanks

[ValeryOchkov]

See please the attach (Prime 5)

[peyman]

Thank you for your prompt response!