Mathcad Product Update

[Tmetcalf]

The session discussed the new functionality in Mathcad Prime 4.0 and the next release of Mathcad. The session included a review of the Engineering Notebook, powered by Mathcad; the integration between Mathcad and Creo, and details on Mathcad Gateway, the new calculation server based on Mathcad, and an update on functionality planned for future releases.

[Fred_Kohlhepp]

1)  Waiting another year or more to get the plotting back to where Mathcad 15 started  is disappointing.  I've resorted to porting data to EXCEL for plotting and tried to embed the EXCEL workbook in Prime, with mixed results.

1a)  The appearance of "Canvas" in the presentation of the new and improved plotting slides is chilling; the application Canvas has been a huge drain on my computer and a huge frustration to me.

2) It's fairly clear from your entire presentation (and the amount of effort you're putting into improving plotting) that there is little interest in Mathcad as a "stand alone" product, the major interest is as an embedded calculator for your CAD product(s).  While this is understandable, it is a major disappointment to those of us who have been using Mathcad as a tool in its own right and are constrained (by employer policy) to use other CAD software.

[ceagleson]

Fred,

I can't agree with you more !  As a long time user of Mathcad(since v12), I also feel frustrated by the trajectory of where the product is going.  At my place of employ we use Autodesk Inventor and with such a sizable investment across multiple sites, I can't see that we would change to Creo (or Solidworks) anytime soon.  The fact we can't do calculation driven design in many cases substantially increases the time involved to iterate a design.  A while back there was a connector product written by some of the folks at PTC, but it was unsupported and only worked for one version.

I also can't tell you how poorly plotting works, in both Mathcad and in Excel.  I have simply omitted plotting for anything but the most necessary plots.

If anyone knows of a good plotting program, please pass it on.

In the end, I like the way Prime looks and (sometimes) works, but it is hard to understand why it takes so long to bring a product up to the same level as the one you are trying to replace (MC v15).

-C. Eagleson