Issues with Mathcad Prime trial

[ptc-5494521]

I remember having used MathCad about 5 years ago and when my son was working on a homework problem involving finding the radius of an inscribed circle I thought...hey it would be cool if we could draw this up in MathCad. So I downloaded the Trial version of Prime yesterday and I was so upset trying to use the program I had to log into these forums to see if anyone was complaining about it. I'm older but I'm still a gamer so my PC is one of those fast water cooled dual video card solid state hard drive type machines built to run Call of Duty at max FPS...running Windows 7 64-bit btw. I opened a blank worksheet and defined 3 variables for the offsetx, offsety, and radius. Then I plopped down an X/Y plot and had something like r * cos(x) and r * sin(y) on the 2 axes. Anytime I tried to click inside the trace formula to make a change like typing something new or hitting backspace to erase something it was taking up to 5 seconds to respond to my keystrokes. I was seriously looking for a button to tell it to quit trying to calculate while I'm typing. This program is horrible compared to what I remember about it.

[TerryRickard]

HELLOOOOOO, PTC. . . Is anyone out there listening???

[RichardJ]

I think they are listening, but they are not hearing (except perhaps what they want to hear).

[DenisJaunin]

Hello, Gilbert,
Have you looked on the menu bar at the top, there Calculation.
Esuite you can choose from the submenu:

Automatic calculation.
Stop silent calculations.
Calculate.
Turn off the area.

Cordially.
Denis

[ryankelley]

I've branched this topic to a new discussion so it doesn't get buried.

[Werner_E]

As long as people are going to post in a thread it won't get buried in the archives.

Where can we look up the rest of this original thread??

[Werner_E]

Where can we look up the rest of this original thread??

Found it - its here: http://communities.ptc.com/message/210068#210068

[ryankelley]

Correct. It was branched because Gilbert Jones is looking for support on a seperate, unrelated topic. Should have clarified where it was branched from and why in my original post. I'll make sure to do that moving forward.

[rrauck]

My understanding of MathCad Prime 3 is that it can convert MathCad 15 files to Prime 3 format but does not support saving a Prime 3 file in MathCad 15 format. I am an engineering consultant who has used MathCad for many years. Can you imagine doing a project for a client and getting a request for the report in MathCad 15 (or earlier) format so their people can review it? Then you tell them you can't do that!!! That is a good way to get "frog-walked" out of the facillity and told not to come back. You can always convert the file to PDF format at the expense of all the Math Computational capability. My clients want to play with the analysis and do "what if" scenarios.

[Werner_E]

It is my understanding that with Prime PTC decided to drop any professional or technical appraoch and chosed a marketing appraoch only.

[RichardJ]

Agreed 100%

The inability to save in any earlier format (even an earlier Prime format!) is both ridiculous and crippling.

[tietjee]

I have run into the same issue with SolidWorks. Latest version cannot be saved to a previous version. To us, this is not a unique issue. The only solution we have is to run multiple versions to support multiple customers. It is not the best the solution, but the only one available. MathCAD is not alone in the approach. That being said, Prime 3 is not MathCAD 15. I am still using MathCAD 15. Prime 3 is not ready for professional use!!! I doubt Prime 4 will be ready either.

[DenisJaunin]

Hello, Gilbert,

Could you attach your file pourpouvoir do a speed test.

Cordially.

Denis

[Werner_E]

Denis, as I understand Gilbert is not moaning about the file is slowly calculating. The file seems to be a very basic one. Its the GUI, the whole program which has an awfully slow reaction to user input. The interface is much more cumbersome in Prime compared to Mathcad, most tasks would need more keystrokes, or, even worse, can't be done with keyboard alone anymore. Visibility (highlighted expressions) is a nightmare and as was already written, response to user input (kbd or mouse) very often is horrible.

[ptc-5494521]

Yeah I didn't need my own thread for support. I don't have the file with me right now to provide but like Werner says it was just a few simple calculations. Even if they weren't smart enough to keep the user input in a different thread than the background calculations I couldn't see it taking that long to update the screen enough to interfere with my typing. I'm an embedded software developer so I guess I have an expectation of developing software for the best speed. I also develop GUI applications for astronomy software as a side job. I'll look at the setting Denis suggested but my advice would be that the default operation of the program should not be what I experienced as a new user. When a user clicks inside a field that is where their attention is so don't give priority to some calculation somewhere else on the page because that's not where my focus is. Why not wait till I leave the field where I'm typing to update that other stuff...because that's when a user is going to look elsewhere. But having keystrokes delayed by 5 seconds...that's just gonna give me 5 seconds to go Goggle for better software.

[ptc-5494521]

Here's a screenshot of where I ran into big delays. If I put my cursor beside the variable "centerx" on the trace equation at the right and type "+3" and then wait for that to appear...then hit backspace twice it took almost 5 seconds for both the 3 and the + to erase. Sure I could turn off calculations but I don't want to turn them on and off every time I want to type. Just don't calculate while I'm editing a field.

[DenisJaunin]

Hello, Gilbert,

I remade your chart and data handling, eg with Prime 3.0.

I results and manipulations almost instantly.

I am running W7 pro sp1 32 bits.

Cordially.

Denis

[ptc-5494521]

Yeah well I'm also W7 pro sp1 64 bits 12GB ram i7 CPU. Either the trial version has issues or it doesn't like 64 bit or you have tweaked something in the program I havent'. But I found quite a number of posts citing bad performance but there's always those couple "works great for me guys". Luckily I didn't pay anything so I'm not taking the time to troubleshoot this any further.

[ValeryOchkov]

Gilbert Jones wrote:

I remember having used MathCad about 5 years ago and when my son was working on a homework problem involving finding the radius of an inscribed circle I thought...hey it would be cool if we could draw this up in MathCad. So I downloaded the Trial version of Prime yesterday and I was so upset trying to use the program I had to log into these forums to see if anyone was complaining about it. I'm older but I'm still a gamer so my PC is one of those fast water cooled dual video card solid state hard drive type machines built to run Call of Duty at max FPS...running Windows 7 64-bit btw. I opened a blank worksheet and defined 3 variables for the offsetx, offsety, and radius. Then I plopped down an X/Y plot and had something like r * cos(x) and r * sin(y) on the 2 axes. Anytime I tried to click inside the trace formula to make a change like typing something new or hitting backspace to erase something it was taking up to 5 seconds to respond to my keystrokes. I was seriously looking for a button to tell it to quit trying to calculate while I'm typing. This program is horrible compared to what I remember about it.

Sorry,

when I see same messages about Prime I think about the bable "The Fox and the Grapes" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fox_and_the_Grapes

Mathcad 15 is one tool - prime is other tool and we can use both.

[ptc-5494521]

I'm a new potential user. I didn't see Mathcad 15 listed for purchase anywhere on the website. I didn't even know about it until I read some of the complaints about Prime on the forum. So go "bable" about fables elsewhere...lol.

[ELSID]

Except for the fact that your license for Prime will work in MathCAD 15.