Solutions comparison / Integration in Excel

[Tristan]

Hi everyone,

I'm starting using Mathcad, so maybe I am just missing something. What I want to do seems really basic to me, but I spent hours looking for that and did't find a solution.

The problem is really common in engineering: I have one problem but many different solutions that I want to compare. For instance, choose a material for a structure. The shape is exactly the same, so the calculation sheet for the flexion of the beam would work for all the materials, but I want to make it with different properties such as Young modulus and density, and compare all the results at the same time.

A very similar way would work in Excel, by simply applying the same formula to many different lines of a material list with all properties for instance.

A solution I can see would be to integrate a Mathcad worksheet in Excel as a formula. Isn't it the purpose of Input and Ouput fields in Mathcad? Or I didn't get it...

I can't imagine this isn't a very basic feature of Mathcad, I guess I should be blind

I can provide you with a worksheet if it's not clear enough

Thank you so much to anyone who could help me for that one!

Tristan

[Werner_E]

Whenever you plan to do a calculation with different variable values you have to formulate all your calculation as functions dependent on those variables. Then you may call this function with different values, compare results, build tables, plot 2D- or 3D graphs, whatever.

The worksheet itself or parts of it unfortunately cannot be looped.

[Tristan]

Hi Werner,

Thank you for your answer!

Well, this seems really inconvenient to me. So if I understand well, the input/output variables are only to use Mathcad as a calculation engine in Creo? What about Excel? It is only to be used as a calculation engine for Mathcad? I would have used all that exactely the other way around:

Have the data in Excel

Excel asks Mathcad to compute some calculations that are too complex for Excel

Mathcad asks Creo to simulate dynamics and kinematics based on intermediate results

Creo feeds these results back in Mathcad to finish the engineering calculation

Mathcad feeds the ultimate concluding result into Excel to display them, compare them, plot them aso.

Is this possible?

I've heard about an Excel Add-in: does it still exist?

Thank you so much!

T.

[Werner_E]

Well, this seems really inconvenient to me.

Its a mathematical approach - independend variables in - dependend result(s) out. It natrural for me. But I understand that it may be hard to rewrite a larger sheet which wasn't planned for that approach from the very beginning and was written just for a single calculation.

I've heard about an Excel Add-in: does it still exist?

I never used it, but yes, you can get to the download page starting here http://www.ptc.com/community/free-downloads.htm Its for Mathvad 15, not sure if thats the version you are using.

[Tristan]

Its a mathematical approach - independend variables in - dependend result(s) out

You mean the methods with the functions? That means you can't have it with the engineer approach at the same time, which makes you lose all the interest of replacing Excel by Mathcad.

If I understand well, I have to make every single calculation step this way:

???

Its for Mathvad 15, not sure if thats the version you are using.

Does that mean it is not supported by Prime anymore? Hum... Finally, not sure I will buy it anymore...

[AlanStevens]

Perhaps an example will make it clear how useful the functional form is in engineering:

If t above was only ever to take a single value (like your area), I could have defined the function after specifying t and then left t out of the argument list. Similarly with poisson's ratio. You only need to include those parameters you are going to change in the argument list.

Alan

[Tristan]

Thanks Alan for the example.

This looks reasonable, even if transforming every worksheet that has been designed for one computation to this format seems really tedious to me...

But another problems appears here if not only E but also nu and t were to have as many different values as E. Then the multiplication and root of vectors would not work. What is the way around that?

Thanks!

Tristan

[AlanStevens · Accepted solution]

Tristan Vouga wrote:

But another problems appears here if not only E but also nu and t were to have as many different values as E. Then the multiplication and root of vectors would not work. What is the way around that?

Thanks!

Tristan

One way to deal with this is, for example:

Another is to use the vectorise operator (Look in the Operators menu - the very last operator in the list - the V with an arrow over it).

Alan

[Tristan]

Alright, I will try this method and put vectors everywhere hoping it won't have issues with fraction operators and multiplications on them...

Thanks!