Mathcad Prime 2.0 plotting functionality. Argh!!

[ptc-186804]

I am so frustrated by Mathcad's continued plotting ineptitude I can hardly take it. We waited for years and years for the old Mathcad to add the flexibility needed to make decent looking plots and it NEVER happened. Now in my first few hours of working with Prime 2.0 (I skipped 1.0) I am already extremely frustrated by basic stuff that really makes me wonder about the development team. Come on, guys, I know you can do better than this!

Contour plots:

- z-axis scale/color bar is now included, hooray!

- however, it's location and orientation are fixed (bottom, horizontal)

- why can't I move it to the right and make it vertical?

- The labeling interval of the z-axis scale bar is tied to the number of

contour intervals. No!!! If I want a lot contours then my labels get

all mashed together and become completely unreadable. Totally

unacceptable.

- If I change the weight of the lines that separate the contours, the

line weights in the z-axis scale bar do not change correspondingly.

Come on!!

- No secondary y-axis in the second major release?? Very poor.

I need this all the time.

- I can't change the font or the font size used for the axis labels. I've

only been waiting for this for uh...let's see...how old am I now??

- Why does the x- and y-axes extend beyond the minimum value set

for the axes? This leads to odd/awkward-looking axes, at least, not

like any plots I've seen or want to make myself.

- Why can't I use a ticked/labeled box around my plots? It seems the

only option is the two intersecting axes.

- Um, how do I put titles on my plot axes? Am I just being dense here?

- Thanks for letting me rant. I guess it's export back to Excel for now

for a lot of my plots. Not that I like Excel's plots, either, believe me.

But at least with fiddling I can get a decent-looking, READABLE plot

out of Excel to present to other engineers and scientists, or include

in a paper. Not possible with what I've seen in Prime 2.0. Sigh...

[FanCG]

i m trying its 2D-plotting. and find that prime losts lots of features in mathcad.

in other words, mathcad‘ is even less flexible and exercisable than mathcad 5.

when I double click the elements i wanna change (say, like axis range, symbol size) in a graph, I find I can do nothing.

maybe I will go back to mathcad, not this prime version

Does PTC wanna make mathcad prime an attachement of its Pro/E? or Are the staffs of Pro E team like this kind of operation?

where the old mathcad developing team?

[MikeArmstrong]

Does PTC wanna make mathcad prime an attachement of its Pro/E? or Are the staffs of Pro E team like this kind of operation?

where the old mathcad developing team?

IMO PTC have tried to bring the front end interface of Mathcad in to the modern era, which I don't mind as long as Prime reaches a level that M15 is currently at, which I think they will but it will take a few more versions yet.

Mike

[mzeftel]

Fan CG,

In Mathcad 15, you double-clicked the graph to access formatting features.

In Mathcad Prime, just click in one of the axis expressions, then you have access all the formatting features from the Ribbon > Plot tab. You can change axis range, symbols, line and symbol thickness, color of the traces, etc.

You can now add multiple horizontal and vertical markers and change the plot background.

Mona

[RichardJ]

- Thanks for letting me rant.

I am going to avoid saying anything too much about graphing. I've posted my opinions on the forums several times, and PTC is certainly aware of them. If I get going my rant would probably be much longer than yours!

In summary, Mathcad graphing has always been rather poor, although it did gradually improve until MC15. Then it fell off a cliff.

[ptc-2193713]

I agree with Richard. Prime2 is a step back in graphing from v15. It is like the programers have no idea what graphing is used for. Presentation to check data, fellow workers, customers, etc. Prime2 plotting does little to support anyone of those activities. Symbols, colors, traces is about 25% of the presentation. Some plots have to be black and white.

[MBuck2]

In my view, PTC cannot ignore its users in this regard. It is ridiculous that a AUD$2,630 profession program such as MC Prime 2 affords very much less plot functionality that one can archive with a relatively inexpensive standalone plotting such a DPlot. Even MS Excel does a better job in my view. The secondary y-axis is a very serious limitation and who had the bright idea that people didn't need gridlines or flexible legends or titles. Plotting in MC 14 and 15 is not as flexible as DPlot, but at least one generate an almost publish ready plot. Please don't tell me that we can use the text tool to embellish ones plots - this is an amaturish approach at best.

[ptc-186804]

I agree with you 100%, Mark.

[ptc-2193713]

Another post asked for samples of multithreading. My current project uses a excel file with 5 worksheets. Each work sheet has about 35,000 data point. Prime2's multiththreading and x64 would facilitate analysis of the data. Unfortunately, I am unable to use Prime2 because of the poor plotting functionality. MathCAD really has to include some the basic items from v15.

[Raiko]

Hi,

yesterday I attended a webcast concerning MC-Prime 2.0. After I skipped MC Prime 1.0 I thought I'll give it a try. After the webcast I decided that I I won't change to Prime any time soon. Too many limitations in setting up documents and too many workarounds necessary to get a decent (i.e. presentable) document. E.g. in xy plots I noticed that trace labels can only be depicted as lines. So if I choose a different symbol, I can't find it in the label box. This is not an annoyance but a serious hindrance!

I therefore agree with David Tietje:"It is like the programers have no idea what graphing is used for." Sigh!

Raiko

[MikeArmstrong]

I have to agree. Prime 2.0 isn't quite there but I believe Prime 3.0 won't be that far away, fingers crossed ;-).

Mike

[Raiko]

I sincerely hope that MC 3.0 does the trick.

Raiko

[mzeftel]

Hi Raiko,

You can change the traces to different symbols. Select a trace by clicking in the axis expression, and look in the Ribbon under Plots > Styles.

Mona

[ptc-2193713]

Mona, You seem to be missing the point. I know I can change the style both line and symbols. There is no way to add a legend to tell you what each style represents. By the way, labeling the axises is just as hard. The y-axis should be vertical. Labels added as text are not linked to the plot, i.e. will not move if the plot is moved.

[mzeftel]

David,

We will be adding labeling features to a future release.

Mona

[Raiko]

Hello Mona,

thanks for the answer but that isn't my point. Of course one can change the traces to any symbol in a graph. However, the legend (at least that's what was shown in the webcast) doesn't reflect this change. It shows for all traces a line even if the trace is made up of symbols. This makes it prone to misunderstandings when you present a graph as a blue star is depicted in the legend as a blue line just like the blue line you've chosen for some other trace.

Raiko

[AlanStevens]

Raiko Milanovic wrote:

.... Of course one can change the traces to any symbol in a graph. However, the legend (at least that's what was shown in the webcast) doesn't reflect this change. ..

Yes it does! Perhaps you saw a test version where it didn't. Even so, Prime 2 plots suck!

Alan

[DonP]

The ribbon is for people who don't mind going hunting for things because they don't know where to find them, but it should only be there is a backup. For fast and efficient editing, the double click and right click options must take precedence. As far as I can tell, the whole "expert-preferred" method of editing graphs (and everything else for that matter) has been abandoned. This must be reversed as quickly as possible.

[davidsnelling]

That is very disappointing. Mathcad has never been able to export report quality graphics and data has to be exported to programs that can. Even Excel is better than Mathcad for report quality graphics.

The former Mathsoft purchased Axum many years ago – Axum was a versatile plotting program. Instead of incorporating Axum features into Mathcad, Mathsoft seems to have buried Axum.

Has anyone successfully used any version of Mathcad to export publication quality plots?

[RichardJ]

Has anyone successfully used any version of Mathcad to export publication quality plots?

Very rarely, and then only by using software such as CorelDraw or Adobe Illustrator to clean it up. But Mathcad to publication quality directly? No. Never.

I usually export the data to Excel, and go from there.

[davidsnelling]

Richard Jackson said "I usually export the data to Excel, and go from there."

I have just done that with 6 Mathcad plots and not being familiar with Excel it was a painful and frustrating process, but at least the final plots will be acceptable to a Journal as Richard’s remark implied.

Why won’t PTC put more resources into improving plots or at least allowing them to be readily exported to some program that will produce report quality graphics?

Are we coming up to a point where we will have to switch to Prime? How easy will it be to convert hundreds of gigabytes of older Mathcad files?

We have young engineers coming into our research group who are much more familiar with MatLab and older, confirmed Mathcad users, like myself, are near retirement. Maybe in preparation for the demise of Mathcad 15 we should run both software packages? Is MatLab any better at producing report quality graphics? Is anyone else facing the same dilemma?

[RichardJ]

Are we coming up to a point where we will have to switch to Prime?

Unless a lot changes, I will only be dragged there kicking and screaming.

How easy will it be to convert hundreds of gigabytes of older Mathcad files?

Unless a lot changes, agony.

Is MatLab any better at producing report quality graphics?

Compared with Prime (which can't produce anything other than a bitmap!), a pen and paper and a scanner is almost as good.

[MikeArmstrong]

Is MatLab any better at producing report quality graphics?

Compared with Prime (which can't produce anything other than a bitmap!), a pen and paper and a scanner is almost as good.

[StuartBruff]

david snelling wrote:

Why won’t PTC put more resources into improving plots or at least allowing them to be readily exported to some program that will produce report quality graphics?

This is something that has puzzled me, given PTC's apparent ability in the documentation area. It should have been fairly easy for them to put a team together that would have created a maths application that would put the rest to shame from a docment point of view. I don't understand where PTC think they're going with Mathcad or why it's taking so long to get there.

Are we coming up to a point where we will have to switch to Prime?

Yes. Which is a problem for those of us who prefer the performance of Real Mathcad! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take part in the Prime 3.0 beta, so I've dropped out of the loop as far as the recent developments are concerened. However, I've just downloaded Prime 3.0 Express to get the 28 days playing around ... I've already noticed the slower calculation and the lack of such things as the abilitiy to embed plots in Text regions.

How easy will it be to convert hundreds of gigabytes of older Mathcad files?

Without a fully automated "Point me to the folder and leave the rest to me, guv'nor" system? Difficult, especially as there are still some things that don't convert and will need rewriting (plus reformatting, although Prime 3.0 seems better than 2.0 in this respect. Shame I can't print or view the "right hand" pages of my worksheets, though - another feature missing.

We have young engineers coming into our research group who are much more familiar with MatLab and older, confirmed Mathcad users, like myself, are near retirement. Maybe in preparation for the demise of Mathcad 15 we should run both software packages? Is MatLab any better at producing report quality graphics? Is anyone else facing the same dilemma?

From a work point of view, there are, as you say, a number of loyal Mathcad users, who prefer it to the other packages. However, with Mathcad having effectively stuck in a capability/presentation time loop for over a decade, it will more and more difficult to get new engineers to accept it. I've just got a copy of Mathematica to play with - it seems to do most of things I've been NewFeaturing about to Mathsoft/PTC for many, many years ... indeed, I would say for a plethora of years.

[davidsnelling]

Thank you Stuart and others that replied to my request for information.

From your responses, and our own experiences, we have decided to proceed with both our multi-user Mathcad licence and 1 MatLab license (for now) and convert some of our Mathcad programs to Matlab. As a retired honorary principal research officer I have volunteered to evaluate Prime 3 and the difficulty of converting our large library of Mathcad files to Prime 3. I may well live to regret this and after a very long career in science evaluating Prime may contribute to my permanent retirement.

After using Mathcad for over 2 decades, and enjoying it, I would not like to contribute to imposing a product, which may well have lost its way, on younger employees. Time will tell but at least we will be ready to bail out if necessary

[Raiko]

Hello David,

we're thinking along the same lines here. Currently, the engineering department is divided in two fractions of MathCad and MatLab users. So far MathCad's mathematical notations and automatic units checking was appreciated even by devote MatLab users. However, after seeing MC3 Prime's conversion results of MC15 files the general opinion is that it's not worth the effort and we all should switch over to MatLab.

Raiko

[davidsnelling]

Hi Raiko, since I posted I have done my first conversion of a fairly straightforward MathCad 15 sheet to Prime 3 and I encountered many problems. So I agree with you conversion of large libraries are likely not worth the effort. It is not clear if our present support covers Prime 3 so I have not been able so far to get help from PTC.

Unlike your group we are predominantly MathCad, but I can see it changing rapidly as new people with MatLab experience come in and the MathCad users retire or get promoted to largely administrative positions. As many in this discussion group have said it is such a pity that PTC has ignored established customers and their suggestions and needs. Does anyone know how many versions of Prime we have before support to Mathcad 15 ends?

I really like Mathcad 15, but don’t feel I can contribute to imposing it on colleagues.

Dave

[tietjee]

If PTC is not carefull that is what will happen. My maintenance is coming due at the end of June. Unless I get some more information on Prime 4, I will not renew my maintenance. There are other programs as good as Prime.

[Raiko]

Hi David,

I recall having read in this forum that the support for MC15 will last at least until Prime 4; maybe even Prime 5. Personally I hope much longer. PTC has to since Prime is nowhere near substituting MC 15.

Raiko