Mathcad Prime 3.1, 4 and 5 Lack of features

[MarkBuckton]

‌Can someone at PTC explain to us why Mathsoft that had a revenue of only $20 million was able to deliver a Mathcad product that is superior in just about everway to Mathcad Prime 3.1? If you recall, before PTC purchased Mathsoft for $62 million (yes they got a bargain) we had a Mathcad version with scriptable objects, Mathcad web server, flexible plotting with grid lines and dual y, legends and so on, the choice of solvers in the solve blocks, a faster interface, less ugly solve blocks, and the ability to save in a MS Word format. Probably the only thing missing was the units in solve blocks and auto numbering of equations as is done in Maple. Now we are told that probably not even version 5 of Mathcad will not have all these misting features That we had ten years ago. According to what I read PTC has revenues of 1.5 Billion per year. So the real question that one has to ask is how can a company 75 times the size of the original Mathsoft be so incompetent? What did happen to the original 130 Mathsoft employees? How many in the Mathcad division now? And what in the hell are they doing with their time? In my view, the only way that PTC can reinvigorate Mathsoft is to excise it from the main company i.e. make it a wholly owned subsidiary of the parent. If you recall this is what Apple did with FileMaker and that software has become better and better with each version. At present Mathcad gets more buggy with each version. Management it would seam is more interested in themselves than the product. As with many large companies middle management gets paid very well for doing almost nothing. PTC GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER or users will be leaving in droves. In what universe does someone pay many thousands of dollars in maintenance for a software product that gets worse with ever new version? I believe PTC new marketing catchphrase is

"There's a sucker born every minute"

[davidsnelling]

Couldn't agree more Mark. Plotting is very poor in Mathcad 14 in that exported output does not meet publication standards, butt apparently Prime 3 is a step backwards.

[ValeryOchkov]

I remember when (2006) a message that PTC bought MathSoft came, the first reply here (Collaboratory forum) was - now Mathcad is going to its, pardon, end. (There is more correct strong Russian word )

Yes - now we have Prime not Mathcad!

[TonyBusby1]

I cannot print from Prime 3.1 as it's not, as claimed, fully compatible with Windows 8.1. It turns out that PTC's support team do not have access to a pc running windows 8.1 to help solve the problem as 'the decision was made to stay with windows 7'. Can you believe that?

[MikeMcDermott]

Is there a list somewhere of missing features of Prime 3.1 ? Here is a start.

Plotting is lacking.

No ability to lock regions.

8-10x the launch time (~30 seconds compared to ~3-4 seconds for MC15)

No right mouse button copy-past on equation editing. You have to use cntrl-c and cntrl-v

[ValeryOchkov]

Mike McDermott wrote:

Is there a list somewhere of missing features of Prime 3.1 ? Here is a start.

See please https://polls/1134

[MikeMcDermott]

Thanks, but the link doesn't work.

[ValeryOchkov]

ValeryOchkov wrote:

Mike McDermott wrote:

Is there a list somewhere of missing features of Prime 3.1 ? Here is a start.

See please https://polls/1134

Sorry - It was one bug of this forum

[RichardJ]

Mike McDermott wrote:

Is there a list somewhere of missing features of Prime 3.1 ? Here is a start.

Plotting is lacking.

No ability to lock regions.

8-10x the launch time (~30 seconds compared to ~3-4 seconds for MC15)

No right mouse button copy-past on equation editing. You have to use cntrl-c and cntrl-v

Here's a longer list: https://www.ptcusercommunity.com/message/440817#440817. They still have lots of work to do!

[RickMason]

It is completely pathetic the shape that 3.1 is in after all these years compared to v15! STILL don't have pre and post fix operators, STILL don't have the complete set of x-y plot features, and the conversion process for bringing v15 worksheets forward with ALL the same functionality of v15 is almost completely worthless. I have several 100+ page worksheets to try to convert and I'm building more all the time. On top of that I'm paying for yearly maintenance on v15 that is providing practically no useful improvements. I DON'T NEED INTEGRATION WITH A HUNDRED OTHER TOOLS. I NEED MATHCAD FUNCTIONALITY AND THE ADVANCEMENT OF MATHCAD FUCTIONALITY!!! This minimum requirement has been almost completely ignored by PTC in building an ostensibly "updated" product. Instead they give us some kind of ridiculous phone app and then have the unbelievable audacity to call it Prime.

[kfalkenberg]

I have difficulties to make my company pay for the licence.

Why should we pay xy k€ for the maintenance of a product that is not improved ?

And I must admit - it is reasonable to ask this question --

[davidsnelling]

The manager of our research group (approximately 10 users) has, reluctantly, decided to renew PTC support for Mathcad. I am the only one in the group who has even loaded Prime and I found converting our existing Mathcad files to Prime was so cumbersome and error prone I abandoned any further comparison of Prime and Mathcad. The limited graphics capability of Prime (not that Mathcad 15 is really adequate) and the absence of animation - which we use to conveniently scan large data sets – were obvious problems.

We are now paying for support that really does not contribute to the development of software we are using. If Prime does not end up including most of the existing features of Mathcad and does not permit easy conversion of Mathcad files to Prime then all our legacy files are essentially stranded and unavailable to us. Our research group has used Mathcad for 2 decades for the initial processing of most raw data and its subsequent more detailed analysis. I don’t know any quick way to count files, but the number of our Mathcad files must run into the thousands. PTC is betraying the trust of long-time Mathcad users and will probably leave them with no support.

More Matlab licenses are being added in our group to cover the consequences of future abandonment of Mathcad by PTC and most of our incoming personnel are more familiar with Matlab anyway. Unless there is a dramatic improvement in PTC Prime in the next couple of years I can see the use of Mathcad in our research group steadily declining.

[JimMcWhirter]

Very parallel experience and situation for my team. And I use animation often for the same purpose (to roll through large data sets) - interesting. And everything else you said - been there and agree. I started using Mathcad in graduate school in the late 1980's, and used it in the classroom when I was a professor, and extensively in my industry career. Long history with the product, and so sad and frustrating to see it languish. But I am slowly moving my work to Matlab because it is clear to me that PTC has every intention of stranding me and I want to start the transition while Matcad 15 is still supported. But I will miss the interface. And I am a Mathcad units junkie. Tried two versions of Prime, another person in our group tried latest - in all cases the "test period" was very short.

Jim

[akelly]

I have installed 2.0, 3.0, and 3.1, but I still keep going back to 15. I use text styles heavily and sorely miss them. Navigation around the worksheet and manipulation of regions with the keyboard seemed much easier. Plotting was much, much, much, much better. The plot animation was very cool. I only used it once, but it was perfect for a presentation that I gave. I have the Roark's and Marks handbooks and miss those a lot, too.

[StuartBruff]

Andrew Kelly wrote:

I have installed 2.0, 3.0, and 3.1, but I still keep going back to 15. I use text styles heavily and sorely miss them. Navigation around the worksheet and manipulation of regions with the keyboard seemed much easier. Plotting was much, much, much, much better. The plot animation was very cool. I only used it once, but it was perfect for a presentation that I gave. I have the Roark's and Marks handbooks and miss those a lot, too.

I confess that I struggle to understand the rationale for not developing the basic capabilities of Mathcad, whilst simultaneously improving its utility to PTC. Mathcad graphics were pretty cool when first introduced but they became annoyingly clunky after a short time, and should really have been improved well before PTC took over. Animation is a case in point, it is frustratingly mandraulic and work should have begun almost immediately to allow the user to control it from within a worksheet, or at the very least to pick up its parameters from a worksheet ... Having to type in the control values every time is a nonsense, especially after more than a decade. Similar considerations apply to all of the other graphics, as well.

I agree about the text styles. I use them in most of my worksheets, and I also make use of the Math Styles.

Stuart

[StuartBruff]

Mark Buckton wrote:

... Probably the only thing missing was the units in solve blocks and auto numbering of equations as is done in Maple...

I'm afraid there was a lot missing from M15 that should have been there, Mark. As I said in my reply to Andrew further down the thread, the graphics was in dire need of an overhaul to add more graph types and, specifically, to add/enhance automation and integrate them more closely into the worksheet. Who, for example, really enjoys manually adjusting the settings on a multiplot 3D Plot or Animation? None of Mathcad's major competitors make the user go through such a rigmarole. It should have been a straightforward exercise that could have been handled by a couple of smart summer intern students from MIT! What's really frustrating is that Mathsoft had some really good graphics that it might well have been able to port into Mathcad 2000 from its S-PLUS product.

Mathcad has poor support for multidimensional arrays (eg, there's no empty array, indexing is appalling for other than 1- and 2-dimensional matrices, and it really should be smart enough to use vectors or ranges as indices), string handling is primitive, equations don't auto-wrap, programs don't auto-push, etc, etc..... I've made several lists over the years and, unlike the entries on Ko-Ko's list, all of them have been missed.

Stuart

[TonyBusby1]

Missing features from Prime. My List:

1. Text Styles

2. Customisable units

3. Exponential Threshold

4. The ability to customise the function categories that are displayed on the Functions tab on the ribbon bar

5. More text formatting features such as subscripts and superscripts

6. Individual margin controls for left, right, top and bottom margins.

7. Align regions

8. View regions

9. Mixed fractions

10. A right click menu within regions for cutting, copying, pasting etc.

11. Redefining warnings

12. Autosave

13. Locked area

14. Worksheet protection

15. Hyperlinks

16. Rulers and Tabs

17. Scriptable objects

18. Control objects

[RichardJ]

How about "save to an earlier version". Prime 3.1 can't even save to Prime 3.0 format, and Prime 3.0 can't read a Prime 3.1 file! That's ridiculous! Working cooperatively with Prime is not possible unless everyone is on the exact same version.

[MarkBuckton]

The irony is that indeed on some occasion PTC ask users to give them list of what features they they should include in future versions of Mathcad. This initiative must be their form of appeasement because in the end PTC give us nothing. The missing features are more than obvious to anyone using Mathcad. The only conclusions one can draw is that tPTC management either don't care about Mathcad or haven't a clue about this software. To me and most users the development path is obvious - in first instance just give us back the Mathcad 15's features that everyone uses and have grown to love.

I know of no other mainstream software produced by a large corporation that will not save to earlier versions. The mere fact that PTC ask the Mathcad forum to list missing features tells me that they don't understand Mathcad and supports my suspicion that its coding is mainly outsourced hence why they have very bad internal software quality insurance. I am a betatester for an architectural CAD package and their is no way that that company would release new versions of their software riddled with bugs and having less features than a previous versions (typically they deliver 150 new features per year). The idea that they wouldn't include backward and forward seamless conversion would be an anathema to most commercial software vendors. So the question remains WHY ARE USERS PAYING SOFTWARE MAINTENANCE for feature that they don't get? It may be a waste of time writing this stuff because I am afraid PTC JUST DON'T GET IT.

[RichardJ]

I know of no other mainstream software produced by a large corporation that will not save to earlier versions.

SolidWorks. Although they seem to limit it to major version changes, such as 3.0 to 4.0. I would agree that I know of no other software company where versions 3.0 and 3.1 would have mutually incompatible file formats.

my suspicion that its coding is mainly outsourced

Actually, I am quite certain that is not the case. The biggest problem is that the Mathcad development group is seriously understaffed.

The idea that they wouldn't include backward and forward seamless conversion would be an anathema to most commercial software vendors.

Backward conversion, I agree. Few companies provide forward conversion though. That would require continued maintenance of old software versions, which is usually not financially viable.

[MarkBuckton]

"Few companies provide forward conversion" - I agree but they don't change their file format in a 0.1 release of their software. My point is that the only reason it is not called Mathcad 4.0, is that PTC would have bean beaten to death if the called it what it really is MC Prime 4 since it has a new file format. The only reason a company changes versions is that it has changed the file format. Despite this, Prime 3.1 provides essential no new features to the Mathcad community. I don't want to sound like a broken record but who in their right mind would put a $1,000 in maintenance fees of the table and get nothing in return. Well the answer is many naive people including myself that trusted PTC to do the right thing by its users.

In any relationship there must be TRUST but my point is that PTC have broken that trust. Its not about the money but the principal i.e. betrayal of their loyal users / customers especially those that work tirelessly to help the less proficient users of Mathcad like myself yet expect nothing in return. People like Werner, Valery, Mike, Richard and Alan and the many other great people on this forum that do likewise. I don't see PTC answer any questions. So if the programming is done in-house albeit with very view staff why do they remain silent even when under attack? Why don't they insist to upper management that more staff are needed as I said they started off with 130 staff, how many are there now? Yet not one of them can answer a technical question put to them on the forum.

[ValeryOchkov]

Thanks for the "and the many other great people"

I have had an especial trip from Moscow to Boston to talk with PTC and Alan Razdow about Mathcad future. But...

See please Re: PlanetPTC Community members visiting HQ

[MarkBuckton]

Hi Valery;

It good to here that we have an advocate for Mathcad users. I hope they understood your message loud and clear, your link makes the Mathcad problems obvious to all. I had no idea that Alan Razdow was still advising PTC about Mathcad's future. If PTC don't listen to you or Alan what hope is there for Mathcad in the future? I just cannot understand what the problem is - there seems to be some systemic failure within PTC or else how can these things continue to happen. As a beta-tester of another advanced software system, which I am told has over 100,000 lines of C++ code, was recently completely rewritten for 64 bit operating systems (mac and windows), which I am told is a non-trivial task for such a large code base. The company, to which I refer, had 2 engineering teams working on the problem. The core engineering team converted the code base and another team worked on new features for the new version of the program. All this was delivered in one year and the new program can read and write old document formats i.e. no standalone conversion tool is required. To me it appears seamless obviously some advanced features are not backward compatible but are converted to simpler representations. This company is about the same size as Mathsoft was when it got sold to PTC. So PTC have no excuses i.e.. they cannot tell us that all their engineers were consumed with Mathcad / Creo API integration. If so why can smaller software firms do core engineering work to their software product yet at the same time deliver feature enhancements to their customers? Why don't PTC understand the old adage - "the customer is always right".

[athurin]

Mark Buckton wrote:

Why don't PTC understand the old adage - "the customer is always right".

Because the old adage is very, very wrong. most of the time, the customer is wrong. Customers are like other people, just because they pay money for something doesn't give them every right, not does it make them right about everything.

Just because you buy bread to your baker, are you "right" to be rude to him ? Just because you pay an engineer to design a perpetual motion machine, does it make perpetual motion machines possible ? Anyone who believes that customers, because they pay, have every right, and are always right, is not a person that is worth speaking too.

Now on the other hand, assuming customer are reasonable people, if *most* of them say the same thing, then probably they are right. Statistically, 90% of people being wrong at the same time (and wrong in the same way) is relativeley unlikely, and in which case, it is more likely that the service provider is wrong. What makes our complaints right is not that one person complains about it, but because so many people complain about the same thing.

If one customer is a rude, he is a moron. If all customers are rude, it's probably because the baker is rude in the first place...

[RichardJ]

Now on the other hand, assuming customer are reasonable people, if *most* of them say the same thing, then probably they are right. Statistically, 90% of people being wrong at the same time (and wrong in the same way) is relativeley unlikely

Eat s***. A trillion flies can't be wrong

[RickMason]

Well, there are also many significant examples where a very large group of people can be very wrong about something at the same time, especially when it comes to superstition. Superstition is based mainly upon emotional instability and human beings are really quite good at organizing this, even to an institutional level.

That being said, I firmly maintain that Prime is still a mess.

[athurin]

I was very careful to say it's unlikely, not impossible. It happens, and history books are filled with stories of the majority being wrong (especially history of science).

What I mean is not that large groups are always right, that's just nonsense. But when a large group says something, it is high time to ask "could I be wrong ?".

[RickMason]

Yes I understand, and I couldn't agree more. I was just throwing the juxtaposition of another one my pet cases of incredulity under the bus along with this one for dramatic effect, or as Arlo might say... "to be used as evidence against us."

[StuartBruff]

Perhaps the adage should be changed to something more alongs the lines of "The Customer's Money is always right?"

If you find that The Customer's Money is not being transformed by your Sales into Your Money, then no matter how right or wrong they are, or the level of their stupidity and/or ignorance, you need to find ways of finding other more perceptive / gullible Customers or you need to Play Along With The Customer to get some more of their lovely Money ... and hope that by the time you find The Way, that your Fellow Traveller's (ie, Competitors) haven't got there first!

Stuart

[ValeryOchkov]

the customer is always right

I am here

the creator always right