Mathcad and prime file extensions

[remslie]

I am using Mathcad 15. I have downloaded many zipped XMCD files from this community site in the past. Now whenever I search topics regarding queries I have, the attached zipped files now seem to always be MCDX which I believe is a Prime file. When extracted these files are "greyed" in the file explorer and will not open. Is there something I need to do to convert to Mathcad format?

Many Thanks

Ross

[Werner_E · Accepted solution]

PTC provides no means to convert a Prime worksheet to the legacy MC15 format.

You even can't save a sheet with  Prime 7 in another, older Prime format.

PTC thinks they can make more money with this strategy as it forces people to switch to the newest Prime version.

IMHO it rather forces people to switch over to other software with better user experience.

[tslewis]

there is very little profrssional software in the world that would downgrade a file to open in old software.

mathcad 15 is old legacy software.

should I be running Autocad 2002 or rhino 2 ?

[Fred_Kohlhepp]

Autocad is modeling software (think computer drafting.)  A web search leads me to believe that rhino 2 is as well.

Mathcad OTOH, is a numeric math package; think MATLAB, Maple, Mathematica.

They are not the same types of software.

[Werner_E]

---

@tslewis wrote:

there is very little profrssional software in the world that would downgrade a file to open in old software.

mathcad 15 is old legacy software.

should I be running Autocad 2002 or rhino 2 ?

---

Yes, CAD programs have always been a little "arrogant/elitist" in this regard 😉

But why shouldn't you use an older version of Autocad if this version would be superior to the current one (this may not be the case with Autocad, but sure is the case when you compare real (legacy) Mathcad to Prime).

And, to name an example, the competitor Matlab actually can export its files in older formats. Admittedly with varying difficulties and probably not including the Simulink models. On contrary to Prime, version changes in Matlab usually really can be called development and improvement. But I see no justification why P5 and P6 shouldn't use the same file format.

But PTC has solved the problem the PTC way - Legacy versions (being it MC15 or Prime 6 and below) will not be supported in the near future at all (reason are licence fees they had to pay to MathWorks because of the built-in Mupad engine).

[remslie]

Werner,

Thank you for your succinct reply. That is not what I wanted to hear! I agree PTC's  strategy is likely to backfire and turn people away rather than coax them to Prime. What I do not understand is why when you search the community website for solutions to problems in MathCad when you seek to download a corrected worksheet you get a Prime file rather than MathCad??? This makes no sense. If the software is incompatible there should be a community site for MathCad and a different one for Prime... then there is no confusion!.

Regards,

Ross

[Werner_E]

"Prime" actually is called "Mathcad Prime" by PTC, but in this forum we old dogs tend to linguistically distinguish between "real Mathcad" (version 15 and below) and "Prime" for the sake of simplicity. 

PTC sees Prime as the successor of Mathcad or maybe even as the further development of it. But many long term users here see Prime as a huge step backward and the "development" with glacier speed was a sad story from the very beginning. Starting with January next year PTC will stop selling (or renting) older versions of the program, so unless you happen to own a perpetual license of it, Mathcad as we knew is dead.
PTC has heavily underestimated the efforts needed to port Mathcad to a modern code base and they are still not willing to put that necessary effort into its development. I guess when they bought Mathcad from Mathsoft some fourteen years ago, they did not fully realize what they are actually buying. They thought they bought a cute little program which they can easily turn into a small add-on calculation module for their CAD software (Creo) - maybe they still think that way.

Having said that you'll see that there never will be different forums for Mathcad and for Prime. The handling of both programs is similar, the problems people have when they use the software are similar and the help and solutions we could provide are similar. The crux is that because of the incompatibility of the file formats forces us to post pictures or pdf's and forces people to retype from there rather than using an attached worksheet. Unreasonable and hardly feasible with more complex worksheets, of course.