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DaveBird1-Visitor
1-Visitor
September 20, 2012
Solved

MCAD 4.5 Anyone?

  • September 20, 2012
  • 2 replies
  • 10993 views

I have several very old drawing files, which were readable in Mathcad 4.5 (probably, since they are not readable in v5.0). I have long since upgraded, one version after another, and dumped all my old version install floppies, although I still have v5.0, for what it's worth. The Mathcad files in which these drawing images were loaded no longer display the images in any version from v5.0 on, of course. The drawing files are .dwg files, but Autocad products no longer read them either.

I had a fellow look at the image files who is familiar with lots of old formats. He said they must be old GenericCad files, from before Generic was bought by Autocad. The early dwg's were not the same as what the standard format eventually became. The drawing files are loaded into the Mathcad files by marking the beginning and ending of the file name by "?". As I recall the Mathcad version that read them was probably the first version of Mathcad that was able to read image or drawing files. Every Mathcad version since then has not been able to read these particular files.

I have acquired version 6.0 of GenericCad. It says the files have errors in them. Haven't been able to locate any older versions.

Question is, do any of you guys have install images of Mathcad 4.5 that I could link to, or you could email to me? I would very much appreciate it if so.

Thanks,

Dave

Best answer by LucMeekes

Hi Dave,

it has taken some time to fire the stuff up, but here is my investigation results.

MathCad 4.0 running under windows 3.11 reports that the "File was created in an earlier version", then displays it similar to what MathCad 11 does.

Working my way backwards: MathCad 3.10 does the same.

Inspection of the file (with Notpad) also reveals that it must be a version 2 file, sinze it starts with:

.MCD 20000 60

where the "2"stands for version 2, I guess.

So I went further and found MathCad 2.01 running on DOS 6.22 (Note that this version of Mathcad was released in Nov 1987, 25 years ago). It opens the file without further message (so it's the right version), and displays the same "?cd19fig1?" for the first figure. But, when I move the cursor over that text (arrow keys, no mouse), it suddenly shows 2 quotation marks, the first just before the first ? and the closing quote is several lines down, and after a few spaces.

And now I see that the other text (non equation) parts behave exactly the same, they get enclosed in 2 quotation marks as soon as the cursor is on it. These are just text regions.

Now looking back at what MathCad 11 shows for the ?cd19fig1?: It is that text, followed by several left-pointing triangles: I think those are "newlines", or paragraph marks if you will.

My interpretation is that some 25 years ago you created a "text band" of several lines high, so that you could glue in the pictures after printing.

Mathcad 2.01 comes with a load of sample files. I checked a few and they all start with:

.MCD 20000 0

I don't know what the difference is between a 0 or 60 in the third field.

An interesting side note for collabs involved in feature requests: Mathcad 2.01 allows you to split the "window" in two halves, so that you can look at the same file (you can open the same or another file in the lower window) at a different position, and jump your cursor between the two.

What about the claim that ( a version of ) Mathcad can read HPGL. It's sort of true. I find in the help of version 4.0: "Prepare the HPGL file with mcstrans. Then choose Create Picture from the Graphics menu and type the name of the mcstrans output file in the placeholder."

MSCTRANS.EXE exists in the program directory of Mcad 4. On the file cd19fig1.dwg it reports that that's not a valid HPGL file....

Mathcad 3.10 has the same. I don't see an MCSTRANS with version 2.01.

Oh, I only keep old versions of selected applications. I don't think I have FastCad or GenericCad.

Success!

Luc

2 replies

L
LucMeekes23-Emerald IV
23-Emerald IV
September 20, 2012

Hi Dave,

Mathcad files are generally not referred to as drawing files, but more like document files. While they may contain drawings ( only in the form of bitmaps, as far as I know ) they are used to store mathematics (equations, formulae, numbers, graphs) as produced by the Mathcad application. The original extension used for that type of files is .MCD, since version 12 or so the default extension is changed to .XMCD. As far as I know Mathcad version 4.5 never existed.

If you use Notepad to open a Mathcad file with extension .MCD, you will find that its contents starts with ".MCAD xxxxxxxxx" where the 'x'-es are digits.

If you have several drawing files with a .MCD extension, chances are high that these are produced by a drawing application named MiniCad. Via www.file-extensions.org I found: "The MCD file extension is associate with VectorWork, a CAD and BIM software program, developed by Nemetschek Vectorworks. It was also known under the name MiniCAD with main aim on Mac platform. A *.mcd file contains CAD drawing created and saved in the program."

Success!

Luc

D
DaveBird1-VisitorAuthor
1-Visitor
September 20, 2012

Thanks guys for the reply. But what I am describing is not even close to what you are responding to.

I have some old Mathcad files, with extension .mcd, created in a very early Mathcad version prior to version 5.0. The files are circa 1987-1988. In these files are references to "image" files for example as follows: ...?cd19fig1?... I have the corresponding image file on my drive in the same directory named cd19fig1.dwg. The dwg file was created in an early cad program which no longer seems to exist. The early Mathcad version imported the image file and displayed it correctly in the .mcd file in which the dwg was "called". All Mathcad versions from version 5.0 up do not interpret this file calling protocul. They use a different method to display the contents of the .dwg file. Also, all versions from 5.0 up do not correctly interpret these particular .dwg files. Mathcad 5.0 does not even seem to recognize the file.

So, my approach has been to try to come up with either the version of Mathcad that the .mcd files were created with, or the original program that created the .dwg files. The .dwg creator search has been unsuccessful, so far, as has the search for early Mathcad versions which would correctly interpret the image file. I have found a Mathcad 2.5, but this does not load images at all, so the correct version would be between probably 3.0 and 4.x.

Thanks,

Dave

L
LucMeekes23-Emerald IV
23-Emerald IV
October 1, 2012

Hi Dave,

a little persistence and the rest is solved as well. Here's one of the two drawings you provided (CD19FIG1.DWG):

CD19fig1.png

I found:

"General CADD
A full-featured 2-D CADD program for Windows from General CADD Products, Inc., Cherry Valley, NY (www.generalcadd.com). Introduced in 2002, General CADD Pro was modeled after the popular, DOS-based Generic CADD, which was discontinued by Autodesk in 1997. Although rewritten with many enhancements, General CADD supports all Generic CADD drawings, commands, macros and other components without modification."

You can download a (demo) copy of General Cadd from:

http://www.generalcadd.com

I used:

http://www.generalcadd.com/downloadsV8.htm

Installed it on my WinXP machine.

Upon loading the files, the program complains that two fonts are not available. I made no attempt to correct that, just went ahead with the proposed substitution, which rendered the above result.

Success!

Luc

R
RichardJ19-Tanzanite
19-Tanzanite
September 20, 2012

I agree with Luc. What you have are not Mathcad files.

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