Page setup & calulation order

[SamW]

Mathcad evaluates a worksheet left-right and top-bottom. This seems logical, but this also applies across pages. So if an argument is higher up on page 2 than a required variable on page 1, Mathcad tells me a variable is not defined.

I can change the page width and write subsequent equations across the page rather than down, but I find this a messy way of working.

Alternatively I can just ignore the pages on the right and tell Mathad to print a single page width, but this wastes a load of screen space and means I have to keep scrolling up and down the page.

I'm thinking of using global operators to get round this, but it is hardly ideal.

I'd be interested to hear any other suggestions.

Sam

[AlvaroDíaz]

Try to enclose into areas what you don't want to print to not disturb the screen-view at the design time, and collapse-its for the printed reports.

Alternately can simulate the destroy of mathcad logic inserting several maths areas into text regions followed by carriage returns, just at the right of the page with, for example.

Regards. Alvaro.

[RichardJ]

The only way to think of the Mathcad screen is as a single, continuous whiteboard that extends indefinitely to the right and down. It has no page boundaries.

That of course cannot be printed, so the gray lies show how it will be divided up when you do print it. So they are page boundaries only in the context of printing, nothing else.

The only other alternative I can think of is to increase your page size in Mathcad so the page width occupies more of the screen. Mathcad doesn't offer a "shrink to fit" option when printing, but Adobe Reader does. So first print to a pdf file (if you need a pdf printer try CutePDF: it's very good and free), then print the pdf with the page scaled to fit the paper. This will of course make everything smaller on the printed page, but maybe it will suit your needs.

Richard

[SamW]

Thanks for the replies.

The infinite whiteboard is a useful way of looking at it.

I have already messed around with the screen width and do use a .pdf writer for printing. A combination of this and using global variables is probably the best I can manage.

I guess its just one of Mathcad's limitiations, but it seems a pretty trivial problem to sort out and I can't be the only person who wanting to make better use of my screen space.

Sam

[RichardJ]

On 2/10/2010 11:29:44 AM, SamW wrote:

>I guess its just one of
>Mathcad's limitiations, but it
>seems a pretty trivial problem
>to sort out

Maybe, but also maybe not. It goes back to the very start of the Windows versions of Mathcad, and maybe the changes required in the code would be at such a fundamental level that it would be far from trivial to implement them.

That of course is assuming you could even come up with an acceptable scheme to do what you want. What would you propose as a solution? If you make the calculations on the RH page independent of those on the LH page that would look logical when printed, but it would be very restrictive when working on the screen. I rarely (i.e. almost never) print worksheets to paper, and frequently use the entire screen width. In some cases I use the RH page as a scratch page, and would not want to print it. In other cases I just ignore the gray lines for long expressions or wide graphs (in fact, there is a long standing request that we can turn them off).

Richard

[RichardJ]

I should add that if you have not already done so you should set your left and right margins to a small value. I have mine set at 0.5 inch.

You could also set the page orientation to landscape, which better matches the screen aspect ratio. I sometimes do this if I want to print a worksheet that contains some very wide expressions.

Richard

[Ninetrees]

It seems to me that Mathcad could handle this if it treated pages as real pages. I have often wished for this for the same reason as stated. Then I could decide to display pages side-by-side as do some other products (word processors, for example). I imagine that many of us are running wider displays these days.

OTOH, most of the time I use the single print page feature (my default, in fact) and place all sorts of material, from notes to calcs, to the right of the printed page. I count on those areas not printing AND I count on the Mathcad calc order working the way it does when I put calcs there. I could as well put the calcs in areas that I hide at printing time, and that could apply to notes as well. It would extend the document during development and potentially require formatting attention at print time, but that solution might work if Mathcad worked with real pages, because the hidden areas would then be only a page wide and would not affect pages to the right.

Don't know if it is possible to have the best of both worlds. If the page display is single column, permit the non-printing area to be displayed, and if pages are displayed side-by-side, hide the non-printing area? I guess the solution above is cleaner with real page boundaries...

Just some alternative thoughts dashed off...

Rich
http://www.downeastengineering.com/