Skip to main content
R
Raiko17-Peridot
17-Peridot
April 24, 2023
Question

Mathcad Prime Converter Issue

  • April 24, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 2682 views

I'm writing this as I had to work long on a converted legacy Mathcad document to prime.

Since being forced to convert legacy Mathcad documents to Prime I get from colleagues (who're proof reading my calculations) the following questions:

  1. What does EXPLICIT mean?
  2. Why don't you cut down on the surplus decimals in equations?
  3. What happened to the tidy calculation reports I used to submit?

All this proves that Mathcad Prime is far from the "...professionally formatted document..." PTC claims to provide.  See results in the screen shot below.

 

 

 

1 reply

L
LucMeekes23-Emerald IV
23-Emerald IV
April 24, 2023

1.

Explicit is a means to show the numeric values of selected values in an expression before showing the (numeric) end result. Some people like this.

It works only in symbolic mode. It exists since Mathcad 14 or so...And Prime also supports it. See e.g. https://support.ptc.com/help/mathcad/r9.0/en/index.html#page/PTC_Mathcad_Help/example_displaying_explicit_values.html#

 

2.

There is no control (never has been) on the numeric output of symbolic evaluations. (I guess in 'trying to be as exact as possible) If you want short numeric results from symbolic evaluations, make sure that all values you use are exact. That is: use 1/10 instead of 0.1 etc.

 

3.

Is this about the right page margin?

 

Success!
Luc

 

R
Raiko17-PeridotAuthor
17-Peridot
April 25, 2023

Dear Luc,

 

  1. I know, but my colleagues don't. I'm giving them PDFs so they can check my calculations and not Mathcad keywords.
    Mathcad is , as advertised on PTCs website, quote "Document your calculations in an engineering notebook with natural mathematical notation and units intelligence. Show your work using rich formatting options alongside plots, text, and images in a single, professionally formatted document.." unquote. After converting them to Mathcad Prime it is anything but a professionally formatted document.
  2. In legacy Mathcad (aka. Mathcad 15) you could apply the number of decimal places also to symbolic results. The calculations goes on with full precision, but the decimals displayed can be chosen.
  3. No, this is a comment from one of my colleagues noticing that prior documents where tidy and easy to read. Prime's converter does a lousy job and I need to invest quite some work to make the document legible again.

Regards

 

Raiko

W
Werner_E25-Diamond I
25-Diamond I
April 25, 2023

ad 1)

I guess PTC is planning in a future version of Prime to add the ability to hide keywords, maybe also to replace the arrow by an equal sign. So about 15 years after hard(?) development work you may get partially what you already had 20 years ago. Great!

 

ad 2)

I am surprised! To the best of my knowledge the setting for the display of numbers never applied to symbolic results.
Can you provide a simplified sheet which demonstrates this difference from MC15 to Prime?

 

ad 3)

Fully agreed on. But the non-professional look  is just one of a lot of drawbacks of Prime.

Terms & ConditionsCookie settingsAccessibility statement