Why Two Different Ways to Make XY Plots in Prime 7

[mfrench]

I'm struggling to understand why there are two different ways to make XY plots in Prime 7 - one under the Math tab and another under the Plots tab.  What problem does this solve?

More specifically, I'm having two problems:

1 - When I insert a plot using the Plots tab, I can't find a way to put a grid on the plot.  This is an incredibly basic thing, so I have to be missing something.

2 - When I insert a plot component using the Math tab, I can edit the plot properties.  However, I can't figure out how to save the edited version so that it updates the plots on my sheet.  It seems to only let me save it as a figure file.  I have to be missing something simple, but I can't find it.

Thanks to the community for your help as I try to figure out Prime.

Mark 

[LucMeekes · Accepted solution]

Prime has had a plotting facility since version 1. That's your basic plot. As with Prime's predecessor, (real) Mathcad, customers have ventilated problems with the plotting facility. It doesn't do grids, for one.

So when Prime 5 was long overdue, PTC decided that THE new feature of Prime5 would be a new plotting facility that would feature grids. So they integrated a third party charting facility, the quality of integration is debatable.

Next customers complain about the fact that this new charting facility doesn't observe units and other strange behaviour or lack of feature.

At least you now have a choice, the bad or the ugly. Who knows, the good may be introduced in a future release of Prime.

Success!
Luc

In case its just about grids...Here's some more info about grids in a plot:

https://community.ptc.com/t5/PTC-Mathcad/Grid-on-a-2D-Plot/m-p/672692

https://community.ptc.com/t5/PTC-Mathcad/In-MCD-Prime-4-0-is-there-any-way-to-add-gridlines-to-plots/m-p/86491#M34242

[mfrench]

Thanks very much for the background info.  I guess I still don't understand why the two plotting functions don't talk to each other.  To me, it doesn't look like they have anything to do with each other and that PTC grafted the Chart Component tool on as an afterthought - understandable for an early version, but they've been working on Prime for a long time.

Mark