Managing Mathcad Implementation

[Andrewk2]

Looking for experience / best practices rolling out Mathcad into an organization deeply entrenched in Excel.

Management thinks Mathcad is "nice", but they seem to be stuck on two issues:
1) lost productivity rolling out a new tool
2) managing individual engineers' preferences between Mathcad and Excel

Can anyone share their experiences introducing Mathcad into your organization?

What was the perception of lost productivity? Were there any actual instances of lost productivity?

How do you handle Excel vs. Mathcad? Individual user preferences?

Any other comments would be helpful.

TIA

[ELSID]

The mindset has to change. Work flow is different. With that said, MathCAD is much more intuitive and easier to follow for engineering type calculations. The only problems I have run into are using functions and programing (especially programing with functions). Not AS intuitive to decifer, but manageable.

Only other non-MathCAD issue is the mandated use of canned software for certain tasks vs mathcad.

[AlvaroDíaz]

Mathcad have a lot of problems, that's well know. Point here is that even Microsoft Excel it's a very good administrative tool, have not enough resoruses to call it as an engineering friend. Take this 3 arguments as an example:

1. Have not complexes. I think that an engineer can't leave a lot of time without it.

2. Excel's Solver do what is called 'optimization on site'. As consequence destroy guess values (this is: optimize, but in the site where guesses are). That's make root finding a mistery after values are rewrited in the same place that guess are.

3. Excel have not provide a way to define functions. I have one general macro, but it is very slow to true applications.

So, no complex numbers, no roots, nor functions. What tool is that?

Regards. Alvaro.

[PhilipOakley]

Split the usage three ways:

a. Regular calculation of engineering parameters, often used as 'reports'- these should have nice clean worksheets that the user enters the parameters and the whole report calculates, with neat readable results.

b. Advanced design (leading into the unknown) - these end up being free format created by the appropriate specialist. It takes effort to get these to be neat. There are always at the edge of the 'Here be dragons' territory.

c. Bean counters, Adminstraion, List taking, etc. - these should still be excel.

The hard part is to identify the 'A' group in the existing melee. Find a common calculation (e.g. minimum bolt strength) and work from there.

Remeber it is a tool, use it for the right jobs.

Philip

Philip Oakley