Mathcad resources, books et al. - crises without recovery?

[anthonyQueen]

A dozen years ago,  Mathsoft.com (see Waybackmacine) listed a section of mathcad-related books. I counted around 40+, around half or more in the last 5 years (2000-05).

I recall, distinctly, that there were at that time many websites with mathcad tutorials, showing and offering .mcd files to download and learn. Calculus, differential equations, economics  had their mathcad experts that offered plenty of inspiring work.

Now there is very little left, and that little is often just a fraction of the material that was created and made available more than ten years ago.

So the landscape nowadays looks very different, unfortunately. I hardly recall 1 book about mathcad (Prime or not), in the last five years or so. I came across recently with the resources of one of the most popular authors of math textbooks (ronlarson.com). He makes available resources and files for mathematica, maple, matlab. But nothing about mathcad, even if  it seems a much better tool for  tutorial purposes.

I feel that without such resources the future of mathcad will not look good. I do not know if this is just my impression. I hope to be wrong because of I miss something.

Contrary to the above pessimism, I should say that this forum is very well kept and supported by several experts that offer help. I still fear may not be enough!

Just a proposal: could PTC provide a page that connects to the other valuable resources about mathcad around the net, and signal any book or material that makes use of mathcad?  

Thanks.

[RichardJ]

I feel that without such resources the future of mathcad will not look good. I do not know if this is just my impression. I hope to be wrong because of I miss something.

Unfortunately, I don't think you missed anything.

Just a proposal: could PTC provide a page that connects to the other valuable resources about mathcad around the net, and signal any book or material that makes use of mathcad? 

Thanks.

As you note, we had such a resource list. PTC could have kept it up to date, but instead they chose to throw most of it away, and put the rest behind a wall so that you have to may maintenance to PTC to see it. I doubt that will change.

[anthonyQueen]

Thanks for the feedback.

Does it mean that the old valuable forum http://collab.mathsoft.com/~Mathcad2000/ shown below is available only under a maintenance ticket?

Making it offline for the rest of us (or all of us) was not a long run investment!

[RichardJ]

The Collab is completely dead. Some of it was migrated to these forums, but not all.

Aside from the Collab mathsoft also had a resource center with many worksheets, sorted by topic. That's what I was referring to.

Edit: This: http://web.archive.org/web/20040804121505/http://www.mathcad.com/Library/

[VladimirN]

Richard Jackson wrote:

The Collab is completely dead. Some of it was migrated to these forums, but not all...

In addition, not all messages are restored have attachments.

[RichardJ]

They only went back five years for attachments. The migration also broke all of the hyperlinks. This is because, unbelievably, they migrated everything by hand. PTC has an army of programmers at their disposal (although given the glacial rate of Mathcad development it's perhaps an undersized army), and they migrated it by hand! Someone could have written a script in a tenth of the time that took, that would have migrated everything, and updated all the hyperlinks.

[VladimirN]

It sad, but it's true.

[mfrench]

As something of aside, part of the problem might be that Mathcad sheets are tough to put into a book.

I'm at a university and write books as part of my job.  I use Mathcad V15 and generally print to a high resolution PDF and do a screen shot.  Then, I trim the screen shot and save as a graphics file.  It stinks, but it works.  When I called PTC to ask if there was a better option, they said they didn't know of anything better than what I was doing.  Really? 

Future books will have more MATLAB and less Mathcad because the graphics look more professional.

Prime will probably, eventually be up to the job.  Prime 3.1 doesn't have enough plot formatting functions to produce publishable graphics.  If I understand the road map correctly, Prime 5 should largely solve the problem. 

[Fred_Kohlhepp]

Mark French wrote:

Prime will probably, eventually be up to the job.  Prime 3.1 doesn't have enough plot formatting functions to produce publishable graphics.  If I understand the road map correctly, Prime 5 should largely solve the problem.

Don't hold your breath!

The advertisement for Prime 4.0 is that it "will be as capable as version 15."

And there have been complaints about Mathcad since I started watching the Collaboratory.

[anthonyQueen]

PTC bought Mathcad more than 10 years ago, in April 2006.

At that time at Mathsoft (i.e. at Mathcad) were employed 130 people. The transaction was ufficially of $63M. The statement of the acquisition claimed that mathcad was actively used by 250,000+ professionals, and more than 2000 universities.

In recent Mathcad advs I can still see reported the 250,000+ figure but no more figures on universities. Obviusly PTC focuses its efforts elsewhere. If you are not a Creo user this arises concerns.

In University students are trained. And if a tool is not considered for such a purpose, it would be very unlikely that those students will pick up the tool later in their lives, at work or at home.

Without much training in the educational institutions, the overall resources around the net and elsewhere will be less abundant and less available. And this is what this post is about. Academics and teachers are usually the authors of many training resources. And in Machad's landscape this has become a rarity in recent years.
It is not just a matter that Matlab (or Mathematica or Maple) does better this and that. It is a matter that at Amazon there are dozens of updated books about these apps, from starters to experts, and almost no one  about Mathcad.

I can see that PTC has its own university. I do not know how many people are enrolled in it. But I found disconcerting that instead of promoting at least the older resources that were available, PTC removed them away from the general public.

Without resources will no be party. And that party according to PTC in 2006 was worth in revenus 20M.

[RichardJ]

PTC bought Mathcad more than 10 years ago, in April 2006.

Wow! Is it really that long!?. Ten years to get to Prime 3.1! As a certain orange person would say, sad!

[mfrench]

I am at a large research university and the Mathcad footprint here is pretty small.  I don't know a single other Mathcad user here, though V15 is available on engineering computers and on our online software system.  I've never even heard of Prime being installed anywhere here.  I have no idea where the next generation of Mathcad users is coming from, but I don't think it is here.  Too bad.

[ValeryOchkov]

anthony Queen написал(а):

PTC bought Mathcad more than 10 years ago, in April 2006.

I remember the first reply on this news on this forum (Mathcad Collaboratory) - It is the end of Mathcad.

[ValeryOchkov]

Do you know the English version of this letter from PTC (2009)?

Некоторые пользователи интересуются, что происходит с Mathcad. Мы хотим сообщить, что фирма PTC затрачивает значительные средства и уделяет много времени будущему этой программы. Данный программный продукт находится в фокусе внимания РТС. В компании недавно было создано подразделение по работе с Mathcad. Это позволит команде сосредоточиться на инновациях, которые будут поддерживать программу на переднем крае промышленности. Перед подразделением поставлены следующие задачи:

•Определить сферу применения и осуществить стратегию развития программного продукта для обеспечения долговременной жизнеспособности Mathcad;

•Сосредоточиться на развитии ресурсов для своевременного выпуска версий и обновлений и улучшения интеграции с другими программными продуктами;

•Представлять Mathcad на новых рынках, проникая за пределы основных отраслей деятельности компании РТС и совершенствовать программу с тем, чтобы соответствовать новым требованиям;

•Предоставлять своим потребителям постоянные средства связи, давать информацию о программе, о специальных событиях связанных с Mathcad, советы и рекомендации пользователям.

Мы много работаем, концентрируя нашу деятельность на покупателях, и будем продвигать данную программу в следующем десятилетии. Мы планируем провести первое «пользовательское событие» при помощи виртуальной конференции 16 марта 2010, где можно будет узнать о стратегии и перспективных планах компании РТС в отношении Mathcad.

Мы заканчиваем работу над новой версией Mathcad 15.0, которая появится на рынке в середине 2010 г. Позднее мы сообщим об этом подробнее.

После ознакомления с откликами потребителей, мы решили полностью переработать Mathcad. В этой инновационной программе максимально используются новейшие лучшие практические методики для оптимизации взаимодействия с пользователем, так что пользователь затрачивает меньше времени на документацию и больше времени остается на проектирование. Фокус-группа будет испытывать эту новую версию, Mathcad PrimΣ 1.0 в течение большей части 2010 г. Когда версия будет соответствовать ожиданиям наших пользователей, она появится на рынке.

Компания РТС рассматривает Mathcad как важный компонент всех предлагаемых программных продуктов и оставляет за собой обязательство предоставлять нашим покупателям лучшее программное обеспечение для инженерных расчетов.

[anthonyQueen]

@Valery thanks for all your mathcad resources (still available!).

The document can be found I think here and it is reproduced below:

http://blogs.ptc.com/2010/01/22/announcement-to-mathcad-customers/

Announcement to Mathcad Customers!

By Alan Belniak Published on January 22, 2010

Some of you have been wondering what’s going on with Mathcad, and we want you to know that PTC is investing significant time and resources into Mathcad’s future.  PTC’s focus on Mathcad is evident by its recent formation of a business unit, allowing this team to concentrate on innovations that will keep Mathcad at the forefront of the industry.  The objectives of the business unit are to:

1. define and implement a focused  business and product strategy to ensure long-term viability of Mathcad;
2. dedicate development resources to ensure a timely cadence of releases,  upgrades and improved integration with other software applications;
3. introduce Mathcad to new markets, getting beyond PTC’s core industries and further enhancing the product to meet new requirements; and
4. provide a regular cadence of communications to our customers about product information, tips and techniques, special Mathcad events.

We’re already hard at work, and launching some major activity focused on our customers and moving the product forward into the next decade.  We’re planning our first User event through a virtual conference, scheduled for March 16, 2010, where you’ll learn about PTC’s Mathcad strategy and roadmap. Register here

We’re putting the final touches on a new release, Mathcad 15.0, which will be available to the market in  mid-2010.  You’ll hear more on this at a later date.

After listening to customer feedback, we’ve embarked on developing a completely redesigned Mathcad.  This innovative product leverages the latest best practices for optimizing the user experience, so users spend less time documenting and more time engineering. This new release, Mathcad PrimΣ 1.0 Preview, will be test driven by a focus group through much of 2010. Once it provides the capabilities and experience our users expect, it will be launched to the general marketplace.

PTC views Mathcad as an important component of its overall product offering and remains committed to delivering the best engineering calculation software to our customers.

For additional information about Mathcad click on the product page or contact PTC. You can also find us on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/PTC_Mathcad, or you can visit our Mathcad Collaboratory and join the discussions.

If you’re interested in hearing more about the Mathcad product line, subscribe to the RSS feed to be alerted when a new post is added.

[JeffH1]

FYI... Alan Belniak hasn't posted a PTC blog since 2013 and hasn't been logged into PTC community since March 2015. 

This is the way it's going. There are a number of other PTC folks that used to hang out here and provide useful information, but I haven't seen any posts by them either and they don't answer any direct messages.  I suspect that anybody that gave half a care for Mathcad or the Mathcad user base is no longer with PTC.  I suspect it was too depressing watching PTC destroy the product and user loyalty.  

Back in the early 90's there was a very cool and incredibly useful product that was called Mechanical Engineer's Workbench (MEW) developed by a Pittsburgh company, ICONNEX, that spawned out of Carnegie Mellon University.  It integrated a sketching tool with a spreadsheet tool, word processor, and solver and allowed you solve all kinds of conceptual MechE problems.  You could draw four-bar linkages in the sketch, tie the coordinates and linkage lengths and angles to cells in the spreadsheet, and then animate the linkage through a series of parameters, solving for the missing forces/torques/displacements as it went, and print it all out in a report!  Unfortunately, ICONNEX couldn't sell the concept and M.E.Workbench was sold to another Pittsburgh company, ALGOR, Inc. (now consumed by Autodesk‌) who had no interest in developing it and squashed it dead.

History repeats itself.

In a very ironic twist, six months after ICONNEX started, another company based upon parametric modeling was launched In Boston.  That company was Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC).

[JeffH1]

And how hard is it for a CAD company to draw a stupid 2D graph!?!?   It boggles the mind.

[RichardJ]

Or even a 3D graph! You would expect the graphs in Mathcad Prime to be the best thing in the product, and yet they are pathetic.

[ValeryOchkov]

[Dmitri_K]

Let me introduce my free e-course Calculus I with Mathcad Prime 3 Labs on Udemy. Videos are in Russian, but all Mathcad Labs are in English. This course is based upon this MIT course.

[anthonyQueen]

@Dimitri, many thanks for the info of your interesting course and for its links. I did know about it. I am not Russian, but I enjoy Russian material. Russians in the past decades were very active with Mathcad.

Probably I am asking too much, but some of us still use Mathcad-normal version, and having files in .mcd (better!) or .xmcd will be very helpful. This is particularly true as above has been said in edu places. Anyway, thanks again and looking forward at Calculus II and III courses!!

It is a pity that PTC does not offer a webpage to collect these links of Mathcad material.

@ValeryOchkov. Indeed, PTC stock has gone particularly well in the recent years, as the graph shows. However its balance sheet showed a loss in net income during the financial year ended in September 2016.

Unfortunately -as you may agree- not always the fortunes of the company means automatically the fortune of all of its products. Looking at PTC revenues by industry (see above table)  I guess that Mathcad as a standalone product is hidden in the last two “industries” of the list. So it is a tiny PTC market. From the above figures, one can understand also what PTC is trying to do: integrate Mathcad in other apps that cover the first part of the above list, rather than develop Mathcad as an independent math tool.

I do not blame them, but the above list also seems to confirm that education and university is unfortunately an almost absent sector in their market. My hope is that they will sell the classic Mathcad as independent tool to other software houses, while integrating Mathcad Prime in their main software, as they are doing.

[Fred_Kohlhepp]

anthony Queen wrote:

  I guess that Mathcad as a standalone product is hidden in the last two “industries” of the list.

I don't believe this is true.  I work in "Aerospace and Defense."  I've been "pushing" Mathcad for a long time, it's a challenge because the new engineers come out of school used to Matlab, and that's what they reach for.  Still, Mathcad is a fine engineering tool, so the industries where engineers are heavily employed should be considered as significant revenue sources.  (Many companies specify 3D modeling software from PTC competitors.)  I cannot get my company to abandon CATIA for CREO even if Mathcad worked seamlessly and automatically in PTC's modeling software.

Their absolute neglect of Mathcad (and their failure to give it away free to students and professors) is the reason for the dismal performance of Mathcad sales.

[anthonyQueen]

Fred Kohlhepp has written:

I work in "Aerospace and Defense."  I've been "pushing" Mathcad for a long time...

Their absolute neglect of Mathcad (and their failure to give it away free to students and professors) is the reason for the dismal performance of Mathcad sales.

If Mathcad is heavily "hidden" within Federal, Aerospace and Defense industry, the signal coming from the figures is even more troublesome.  In fact, looking at PTC k-8 forms of  the past years one realizes that for instance in 2014 such sector was weighted 19% of PTC revenues, i.e. 4% more than today.

What I worry most however is the "landing" of Mathcad's interest, starting precisely from students and universities. A very rough indication can be given by the following graph from Google trends. Both the new ownership of PTC, back in 2006,  and the arrival of  Mathcad Prime in 2011 were not able to revert the falling trend (and one presumes interest) in Mathcad from Google searches. Not surprisingly, but unfortunately, this drop of interest seems correlated with the fall of Mathcad's resources around the net.