Programmer's Toolbox
The changing face of Mathcad
Jack Crenshaw
5/27/2011 11:18 AM EDT
Was someone at PTC listening to Jack when they created Mathcad Prime 1.0?
Editor's note: Due to unforeseeable circumstances (including a sick computer), Jack Crenshaw will finish writing about the Kalman filter in upcoming months. Stay tuned.
There's some exciting news about a product I've lived with—and sometimes praised, sometimes cursed—for decades: PTC's premier math analysis tool, Mathcad.
Regular readers know that most of my columns are math-oriented, as is most of my work. For that reason, I'm a heavy user of Mathcad. For more than 15 years, I've maintained a love-hate relationship with Mathcad. I've mentioned it many times in my columns, in terms ranging from wholehearted endorsements to heated, curmudgeonly rants. Although I often curse Mathcad as I use it, the reality is it remains, by far, the most oft-used tool in my toolbox.
Why do I continue to use Mathcad when it frustrates me so? To quote the old joke, it's the only game in town. Oh, yes, other math-analysis tools exist—some with more impressive resumes, more respected pedigrees, and much higher prices. But none of them do quite what I want done. For me, Mathcad stands alone. The reasons are part of this story.
I've not told just you readers my beefs about Mathcad. I've also communicated them to Mathsoft and now PTC. I've talked to people from technical support—very excellent people, by the way—to vice presidents. I've posted my opinions on their web sites and blogs. I was a long-time member of their "Power Users' Group," and I still post from time to time in the Mathcad Community site. I've given them so much "feedback," I think they must surely cringe when they hear my cybernetic footsteps.
Do you get the idea that I am not among Mathcad's biggest fans? Then what I have to tell you next should carry all the more weight.
PTC has recently announced a new version of Mathcad. It's called Mathcad Prime 1.0, and it represents a bold and dramatic departure from older versions.
No, belay that. Prime 1.0 isn't just yet another version, the 16th of 16. It's a brand new product, written on a blank sheet of paper and built from scratch to new specifications. You have to admire the courage of a company willing to invest the time and money in these precarious times.
More importantly for me, the user interface—the part that elicited most of my rants—is radically new. I don't deceive myself that PTC made the changes just for me, but it's as though they were reading my mail (hey, maybe they were). As near as I can tell, every one of the idiosyncrasies I used to fuss about has not just been changed, but changed in just the way I'd hoped for, It's an awesome turn of events, and I'm very excited about it. Can you tell?
The back story
What is a math aid, anyhow? Well, it's something that makes doing math easier. Until the advent of digital computers, we all used to do math the same way the Sumerians and Egyptians did it: First with stylus and clay, then quill and papyrus, later pencil and paper. What alternatives did we have?
When you're doing long math calculations, it's easy to get something wrong. The great astronomer, Ernest William Brown, developed a theory for the motion of the Moon, in terms of a trigonometric series with some 1,500 terms. Later, it was discovered that he'd made an error in the 500th term, give or take, rendering the next 1,000 terms useless.
My own favorite errors were stupid ones; getting a sign wrong, or leaving out a factor of 2. I often wished I could hire an apprentice, whose only job would be to check my math and catch those errors. Or, better yet, do the tedious, turn-the-crank manipulations for me. Just say, "start with these equations, and solve for x." The ideal apprentice would know the rules of algebra, trig, and calculus.
Such an idea became practical with the advent of digital computers. Computers don't just crunch numbers. They can also deal with concepts. The rules of algebra, operator precedence, and so forth, are well known and never change. Ditto for the rules of calculus and trig identities. If we can explain the rules, a computer program can do all the tedious work. And it won't get the sign wrong.
One of the earliest math analysis tools was Macsyma, developed at MIT and refined in various commercial forms. Versions of Macsyma, highly refined, are still with us today.
You must understand: in those days, the acronym WYSIWYG wasn't even on the radar. We gave computers data by punching text into IBM cards or paper tape, and they gave stuff back by printing them on a chain printer (very fast, very loud). In a real sense, a computer program only changed one text string to another. There was no hope to input formulas as they'd look in a math textbook. If you wanted to write an equation like the quadratic formula:
(1)
You had to convert it to its equivalent Fortran form:
Macsyma's forte' was symbolic processing. That is, it could take an expression and transform it into an equivalent one, using the rules of algebra, trig, and calculus. Macsyma was, in fact, one of the very first knowledge-based systems. But it could only operate on Fortran inputs, and it could only give back more of the same. One of its most important applications was in taking the calculus derivatives of expressions.
I once got to see Macsyma used—or misused. A company building robotics controllers was writing new embedded software, and they needed to implement the rather complicated vector/matrix math and Euler angle rotations. The project lead had a most boneheaded idea. Arguing that calling functions and subroutines would be "too inefficient," he decided to get Macsyma to expand them all into scalar equations involving a whole lot of trig functions. He chose Macsyma to expand the equations into Fortran. Pages and pages of it. Then he turned the Fortran over to a bunch of new-hire programmers, trained in C. Their job: To turn the Fortran into yet another language: Pascal. Think that was efficient?
Most computer programs don't yet have the intelligence to say, "You want me to do WHAT?"
Maple and friends
The folks at Waterloo University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada enjoy a long and honored reputation in the fields of language translation and symbolic computations. In the 1960s, computer science departments all over the world were hurting because of all the students running Fortran jobs for class credit. What the world needed, the educators pleaded, was a Fortran compiler system that would read the students' programs, compile, link, and run them, all in one batch process. IBM experts said building such a system was impractical, if not impossible.
Someone forgot to tell the folks at Waterloo, so they just went and built it. They called it Watfor.
A similar situation came up around 1980. The story goes that the Waterloo folks wanted to run Macsyma, but couldn't afford the large mainframe computer it required. So they wrote a symbolic engine of their own. They called it Maple. Over the years, Maple has continued to evolve and is generally considered to be one of the premier symbolic engines of all time. It's commercially available today, from Maplesoft.
The printed page
While we technical types were learning to computerize the processing of math equations, another group had been routinely creating more beautiful equations for centuries. These were the book publishers, who published, among other things, the math textbooks from which we learned our craft. It was only natural that typesetting systems evolved into computer systems capable of driving automated typesetting machinery.
Generating print for textbooks is one thing. For a single scientist or small group, generating it for published papers was quite another. I well remember serious technical papers written on a typewriter, with all the math equations written by hand. Or, not much better, generated by a typist skilled in typing subscripts, superscripts, and Greek letters. It was only natural that we average computer users would yearn to be able to generate book-quality print and equations, from a computer. In other words, let the text output of a general-purpose computer be the text input to a typesetting system. One of the early typesetting systems was the Unix program, troff. Another was Donald Knuth's justly famous TEX, developed ca. 1980. To see the quadratic formula written in TEX, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX.
The problem with troff and TEX was that you couldn't actually see their output until it went to the typesetter or a pixel-capable printer. The input itself was still a mere text string.
WYSIWYG changes everything
All that changed when Apple introduced its ground-breaking MacIntosh computer, with its high-resolution pixel graphics and a laser printer to match. Suddenly, an affordable personal computer could generate output rivaling the book publishers.
Seemingly the next day, Microsoft came out with Word for the Mac, and we learned that we no longer had to deal with Courier-in, Courier-out text. We could see on the screen the printed page exactly as it would appear. WYSIWYG was upon us with a vengeance, and we'd never be satisfied with pure text editing again.
If we could create text and graphics on a personal computer, it was only natural that we'd want to create math equations as well. Microsoft came through again, with its Microsoft Equation Editor, based on Design Sciences very excellent MathType. It's Word with MathType that I use for all my columns you've seen.
Tying things together
As nice as the output of WYSIWYG editors with equation editing was, it was still completely dumb. Mathtype, like troff and TEX, has no smarts behind it. You have to put the symbols where you want them, one by one. Symbolic math processing remained a largely text-only operation. Math aids like MacSyma, Maple, and Mathematica (loosely derived from MacSyma) still used ordinary text strings for input and output. Mathematica at least made an attempt to pretty-print math equations, by simply printing their parts on separate lines. But the results were a far cry from book-publishable.
The next step is obvious: Give me a math analysis program that lets me input my equations in a form that looks just like a book publisher might typeset it, and give me the results the same way.
This is where Mathcad comes in. To my knowledge, it was the very first personal computer program capable of accepting symbolic inputs in natural mathematical form, performing operations on them symbolically, and showing the results in the same form. As far as I'm concern, they still remain alone.
In fairness, Maple too has evolved over the years, and later versions do indeed support mathematical forms for both inputs and outputs. But, for me at least, the text-oriented nature underpinning Maple still shows through. The math expressions are basically sleight-of-hand tricks to hide its inherent nature.
A lot of my work involves deriving the math equations associated with new problems and documenting the results. For me, it's important that I be able to intermix text with math equations, as well as the numerical and symbolic computations associated with them. Only Mathcad can do this seamlessly.
Which is why I use it.
How hard can it be?
While the ability to input equations in WYSIWYG form is Mathcad's strength, you should never get the idea that it's easy to do. It's not, and that's because the most convenient input device remains the keyboard. So how do you get the computer to accept text inputs and display the equivalent WYSIWYG form? Granted, I should be able to type a "Fortranish" character string like:
And get:
x=a+b+2 • y (2)
But try to get fancier, and things start to go south in a hurry. Type the harmonic series:
And you might be surprised by the result. It'll be:
(3)
Mathcad understands operator precedence but can't possibly know your intentions unless you tell it. Think about it for awhile, and you'll realize that you can't possibly avoid the need to navigate around inside an equation, selecting the place where you want to put the next symbol. To do it, you're going to need to use the navigation keys, plus some special keys for things like superscripts, subscripts, square root symbols, matrix operations, and the like.
It's this navigation that's the hard part. It gets even harder when you're not just inputting an expression from scratch, but modifying an existing one. Or, worse yet, editing the output of the symbolic processor. Over the years, the Mathcad folks have tried several schemes, each with their pros and cons.
This is the big area of change in Mathcad Prime 1.0. They've completely replaced the user interface, including the rules for navigating inside expressions. It's the area of the program that elicited by far my most vociferous comments and under-the-breath curses. And the new interface is exactly what I had hoped for. It's a dramatic change, and it's the reason I'm so excited about Mathcad 1.0 Prime.
Still incomplete
Now for the bad news: Mathcad Prime 1.0 is still not complete. In developing it, PTC decided—wisely, in my opinion—not to put things in until they were robust and fully refactored. So key parts of earlier versions are still missing, notably the symbolic processing.
What's that you say? A symbolic processing program that can't do symbolic processing? Well, don't forget that symbolics is far from Mathcad's only function. It can also do ordinary numerical computations, vector/matrix operations, graphing, and much more, just as Mathematica, Maple, Matlab, and others do. Plus a bewildering array of special functions and numerical methods. It's only the connection with the symbolic engine that's missing.
To complete the picture, PTC has a plan. First, the purchase price of Prime 1.0 includes a maintenance contract, providing free upgrades for a year. They expect that, long before the year is out, the missing features will be included. To cover the missing features in the interim, they're bundling Prime 1.0 with a new version, Version 15, of the old Mathcad.
Can you tell that I'm excited? I think it's a great plan, and a great product. If you have a need for math processing, I think you should take a hard look at Mathcad Prime 1.0. If you've been avoiding Mathcad because of its steep learning curve or my dire warnings, it's time to take another look.
Jack Crenshaw is a systems engineer and the author of Math Toolkit for Real-Time Programming. He holds a PhD in physics from Auburn University. E-mail him at jcrens@earthlink.net.
Editor's note: Due to unforeseeable circumstances (including a sick computer), Jack Crenshaw will finish writing about the Kalman filter in upcoming months. Stay tuned.
 |
| Click image to go to digital edition. |
Regular readers know that most of my columns are math-oriented, as is most of my work. For that reason, I'm a heavy user of Mathcad. For more than 15 years, I've maintained a love-hate relationship with Mathcad. I've mentioned it many times in my columns, in terms ranging from wholehearted endorsements to heated, curmudgeonly rants. Although I often curse Mathcad as I use it, the reality is it remains, by far, the most oft-used tool in my toolbox.
Why do I continue to use Mathcad when it frustrates me so? To quote the old joke, it's the only game in town. Oh, yes, other math-analysis tools exist—some with more impressive resumes, more respected pedigrees, and much higher prices. But none of them do quite what I want done. For me, Mathcad stands alone. The reasons are part of this story.
I've not told just you readers my beefs about Mathcad. I've also communicated them to Mathsoft and now PTC. I've talked to people from technical support—very excellent people, by the way—to vice presidents. I've posted my opinions on their web sites and blogs. I was a long-time member of their "Power Users' Group," and I still post from time to time in the Mathcad Community site. I've given them so much "feedback," I think they must surely cringe when they hear my cybernetic footsteps.
Do you get the idea that I am not among Mathcad's biggest fans? Then what I have to tell you next should carry all the more weight.
PTC has recently announced a new version of Mathcad. It's called Mathcad Prime 1.0, and it represents a bold and dramatic departure from older versions.
No, belay that. Prime 1.0 isn't just yet another version, the 16th of 16. It's a brand new product, written on a blank sheet of paper and built from scratch to new specifications. You have to admire the courage of a company willing to invest the time and money in these precarious times.
More importantly for me, the user interface—the part that elicited most of my rants—is radically new. I don't deceive myself that PTC made the changes just for me, but it's as though they were reading my mail (hey, maybe they were). As near as I can tell, every one of the idiosyncrasies I used to fuss about has not just been changed, but changed in just the way I'd hoped for, It's an awesome turn of events, and I'm very excited about it. Can you tell?
The back story
What is a math aid, anyhow? Well, it's something that makes doing math easier. Until the advent of digital computers, we all used to do math the same way the Sumerians and Egyptians did it: First with stylus and clay, then quill and papyrus, later pencil and paper. What alternatives did we have?
When you're doing long math calculations, it's easy to get something wrong. The great astronomer, Ernest William Brown, developed a theory for the motion of the Moon, in terms of a trigonometric series with some 1,500 terms. Later, it was discovered that he'd made an error in the 500th term, give or take, rendering the next 1,000 terms useless.
My own favorite errors were stupid ones; getting a sign wrong, or leaving out a factor of 2. I often wished I could hire an apprentice, whose only job would be to check my math and catch those errors. Or, better yet, do the tedious, turn-the-crank manipulations for me. Just say, "start with these equations, and solve for x." The ideal apprentice would know the rules of algebra, trig, and calculus.
Such an idea became practical with the advent of digital computers. Computers don't just crunch numbers. They can also deal with concepts. The rules of algebra, operator precedence, and so forth, are well known and never change. Ditto for the rules of calculus and trig identities. If we can explain the rules, a computer program can do all the tedious work. And it won't get the sign wrong.
One of the earliest math analysis tools was Macsyma, developed at MIT and refined in various commercial forms. Versions of Macsyma, highly refined, are still with us today.
You must understand: in those days, the acronym WYSIWYG wasn't even on the radar. We gave computers data by punching text into IBM cards or paper tape, and they gave stuff back by printing them on a chain printer (very fast, very loud). In a real sense, a computer program only changed one text string to another. There was no hope to input formulas as they'd look in a math textbook. If you wanted to write an equation like the quadratic formula:
(1)
You had to convert it to its equivalent Fortran form:
X1 = (-B + SQRT(B**2 - 4*A*C)/(2*A) X2 = (-B - SQRT(B**2 - 4*A*C)/(2*A)
Macsyma's forte' was symbolic processing. That is, it could take an expression and transform it into an equivalent one, using the rules of algebra, trig, and calculus. Macsyma was, in fact, one of the very first knowledge-based systems. But it could only operate on Fortran inputs, and it could only give back more of the same. One of its most important applications was in taking the calculus derivatives of expressions.
I once got to see Macsyma used—or misused. A company building robotics controllers was writing new embedded software, and they needed to implement the rather complicated vector/matrix math and Euler angle rotations. The project lead had a most boneheaded idea. Arguing that calling functions and subroutines would be "too inefficient," he decided to get Macsyma to expand them all into scalar equations involving a whole lot of trig functions. He chose Macsyma to expand the equations into Fortran. Pages and pages of it. Then he turned the Fortran over to a bunch of new-hire programmers, trained in C. Their job: To turn the Fortran into yet another language: Pascal. Think that was efficient?
Most computer programs don't yet have the intelligence to say, "You want me to do WHAT?"
Maple and friends
The folks at Waterloo University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada enjoy a long and honored reputation in the fields of language translation and symbolic computations. In the 1960s, computer science departments all over the world were hurting because of all the students running Fortran jobs for class credit. What the world needed, the educators pleaded, was a Fortran compiler system that would read the students' programs, compile, link, and run them, all in one batch process. IBM experts said building such a system was impractical, if not impossible.
Someone forgot to tell the folks at Waterloo, so they just went and built it. They called it Watfor.
A similar situation came up around 1980. The story goes that the Waterloo folks wanted to run Macsyma, but couldn't afford the large mainframe computer it required. So they wrote a symbolic engine of their own. They called it Maple. Over the years, Maple has continued to evolve and is generally considered to be one of the premier symbolic engines of all time. It's commercially available today, from Maplesoft.
The printed page
While we technical types were learning to computerize the processing of math equations, another group had been routinely creating more beautiful equations for centuries. These were the book publishers, who published, among other things, the math textbooks from which we learned our craft. It was only natural that typesetting systems evolved into computer systems capable of driving automated typesetting machinery.
Generating print for textbooks is one thing. For a single scientist or small group, generating it for published papers was quite another. I well remember serious technical papers written on a typewriter, with all the math equations written by hand. Or, not much better, generated by a typist skilled in typing subscripts, superscripts, and Greek letters. It was only natural that we average computer users would yearn to be able to generate book-quality print and equations, from a computer. In other words, let the text output of a general-purpose computer be the text input to a typesetting system. One of the early typesetting systems was the Unix program, troff. Another was Donald Knuth's justly famous TEX, developed ca. 1980. To see the quadratic formula written in TEX, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX.
The problem with troff and TEX was that you couldn't actually see their output until it went to the typesetter or a pixel-capable printer. The input itself was still a mere text string.
WYSIWYG changes everything
All that changed when Apple introduced its ground-breaking MacIntosh computer, with its high-resolution pixel graphics and a laser printer to match. Suddenly, an affordable personal computer could generate output rivaling the book publishers.
Seemingly the next day, Microsoft came out with Word for the Mac, and we learned that we no longer had to deal with Courier-in, Courier-out text. We could see on the screen the printed page exactly as it would appear. WYSIWYG was upon us with a vengeance, and we'd never be satisfied with pure text editing again.
If we could create text and graphics on a personal computer, it was only natural that we'd want to create math equations as well. Microsoft came through again, with its Microsoft Equation Editor, based on Design Sciences very excellent MathType. It's Word with MathType that I use for all my columns you've seen.
Tying things together
As nice as the output of WYSIWYG editors with equation editing was, it was still completely dumb. Mathtype, like troff and TEX, has no smarts behind it. You have to put the symbols where you want them, one by one. Symbolic math processing remained a largely text-only operation. Math aids like MacSyma, Maple, and Mathematica (loosely derived from MacSyma) still used ordinary text strings for input and output. Mathematica at least made an attempt to pretty-print math equations, by simply printing their parts on separate lines. But the results were a far cry from book-publishable.
The next step is obvious: Give me a math analysis program that lets me input my equations in a form that looks just like a book publisher might typeset it, and give me the results the same way.
This is where Mathcad comes in. To my knowledge, it was the very first personal computer program capable of accepting symbolic inputs in natural mathematical form, performing operations on them symbolically, and showing the results in the same form. As far as I'm concern, they still remain alone.
In fairness, Maple too has evolved over the years, and later versions do indeed support mathematical forms for both inputs and outputs. But, for me at least, the text-oriented nature underpinning Maple still shows through. The math expressions are basically sleight-of-hand tricks to hide its inherent nature.
A lot of my work involves deriving the math equations associated with new problems and documenting the results. For me, it's important that I be able to intermix text with math equations, as well as the numerical and symbolic computations associated with them. Only Mathcad can do this seamlessly.
Which is why I use it.
How hard can it be?
While the ability to input equations in WYSIWYG form is Mathcad's strength, you should never get the idea that it's easy to do. It's not, and that's because the most convenient input device remains the keyboard. So how do you get the computer to accept text inputs and display the equivalent WYSIWYG form? Granted, I should be able to type a "Fortranish" character string like:
"x = a+b+2*y"
And get:
x=a+b+2 • y (2)
But try to get fancier, and things start to go south in a hurry. Type the harmonic series:
"x = 1+1/2+1/3+1/4+…"
And you might be surprised by the result. It'll be:
(3)Mathcad understands operator precedence but can't possibly know your intentions unless you tell it. Think about it for awhile, and you'll realize that you can't possibly avoid the need to navigate around inside an equation, selecting the place where you want to put the next symbol. To do it, you're going to need to use the navigation keys, plus some special keys for things like superscripts, subscripts, square root symbols, matrix operations, and the like.
It's this navigation that's the hard part. It gets even harder when you're not just inputting an expression from scratch, but modifying an existing one. Or, worse yet, editing the output of the symbolic processor. Over the years, the Mathcad folks have tried several schemes, each with their pros and cons.
This is the big area of change in Mathcad Prime 1.0. They've completely replaced the user interface, including the rules for navigating inside expressions. It's the area of the program that elicited by far my most vociferous comments and under-the-breath curses. And the new interface is exactly what I had hoped for. It's a dramatic change, and it's the reason I'm so excited about Mathcad 1.0 Prime.
Still incomplete
Now for the bad news: Mathcad Prime 1.0 is still not complete. In developing it, PTC decided—wisely, in my opinion—not to put things in until they were robust and fully refactored. So key parts of earlier versions are still missing, notably the symbolic processing.
What's that you say? A symbolic processing program that can't do symbolic processing? Well, don't forget that symbolics is far from Mathcad's only function. It can also do ordinary numerical computations, vector/matrix operations, graphing, and much more, just as Mathematica, Maple, Matlab, and others do. Plus a bewildering array of special functions and numerical methods. It's only the connection with the symbolic engine that's missing.
To complete the picture, PTC has a plan. First, the purchase price of Prime 1.0 includes a maintenance contract, providing free upgrades for a year. They expect that, long before the year is out, the missing features will be included. To cover the missing features in the interim, they're bundling Prime 1.0 with a new version, Version 15, of the old Mathcad.
Can you tell that I'm excited? I think it's a great plan, and a great product. If you have a need for math processing, I think you should take a hard look at Mathcad Prime 1.0. If you've been avoiding Mathcad because of its steep learning curve or my dire warnings, it's time to take another look.
Jack Crenshaw is a systems engineer and the author of Math Toolkit for Real-Time Programming. He holds a PhD in physics from Auburn University. E-mail him at jcrens@earthlink.net.
|
|
|
|
|
Navigate to related information
Luis Sanchez
5/27/2011 4:49 PM EDT
Great article! I'm amused by your writing style and the good piece of history you share on math software and computers. I haven't used Matchcad for quite a while now, but I remember it was powerful but yet a little awkward at times when entering the equations. I bet that new version is worth taking a look at. Thanks!
Sign in to Reply
Charlie_Edmondson
5/31/2011 2:35 PM EDT
Many moons ago, I was in my first year of grad school (and my second year of taking EE!) and I had a course in microwave filter theory, by Matthai. I was still feeling my way through solving microwave filters, but I found a system that worked. I used two computers side by side. On one I was running Touchstone to simulate the filters I was designing. On the second, I had Mathcad, to run the math behind the filter coefficients I was using. My classmates, who were well aware of my difficulties with the subject, were amazed at how quickly I was able to complete my homework, with nice printouts of my results! The prof was really impressed when I had a design for a three element coupled line filter that worked, and the math was completely and utterly wrong, but gave the correct results! I LOVED Mathcad!
Charlie
Sign in to Reply
przemek
5/31/2011 5:00 PM EDT
You should check out wxMaxima, a GUI version of Maxima which in turn is an Open Source version of MIT Macsyma.
It does do the symbolic math, of course: check out the screenshots
http://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?group_id=126731
Sign in to Reply
cdhmanning
5/31/2011 8:31 PM EDT
These days there seems to be growing interest in using the python Scipy,Numpy and Sage for numerical processing. Seems to do pretty much everything Matlab can as well as giving you a full-blown programming language.
Sign in to Reply
Himanshu_Gupta
5/31/2011 10:54 PM EDT
i have used MathCad in my previous organization and i agree with you that i also have love / hate relationship with it. Most times, it is most sensible to work on it due to its scientific nature while at other times it is so slow and sluggish to calculate the most simple formula that you want to stop working on it.
Sign in to Reply
cadencetech
6/1/2011 11:17 PM EDT
Jack,
I am looking forward to your next installment on the Kalman filter. The sooner the better.
Sign in to Reply
Rich Webb
6/3/2011 10:54 AM EDT
I've loved MathCAD since I first ran it on a Hercules graphics card on a DIY PC clone, but I hate that it seems to have drifted away from the affordable and engineer-friendly days of yore.
Once upon a time, when it was time to upgrade to a new PC it was just necessary to install MathCAD and run it once with the original CD in place for a DRM check. Now, not so much.
I was willing to buy every upgrade up to 2001i. Now, comparing the (relatively large) upgrade cost against the marginal gain in functionality, and weighing that against the nastier licensing policy and annual maintenance fees, I think I'll stick with 2001i until the CD crumbles into dust.
Sign in to Reply
Windoze
6/4/2011 8:56 AM EDT
"Maple and friends" - aside from the well-known and astoundingly far-ranging Mathematica, on which you can build an entire IT Enterprise solution (real metrics anyone?), there's also Mathcad and Matlab. The latter is frequently used in engineering for numerical analysis, such as fluid dynamics, but also for complex circuit analysis. For students of all ages (who struggle for cash :), there's the all-powerful, all-knowing SAGE at sage.org. It's free. It has more libraries than you can shake a 12 dimensional tensor at. cheers!
Sign in to Reply
Frank Eory
6/4/2011 4:24 PM EDT
It's been quite a few years since I used Mathcad, but the symbolic processing was, for me, one of it's most exciting features. I can't believe they left that out of this new re-written version.
Sign in to Reply
BobC_
7/30/2011 5:25 PM EDT
CompPad (http://comppad.sourceforge.net/) is a plugin for LibreOffice/OpenOffice that provides some MathCad-like functionality.
The project is evolving rapidly, but already provides some powerful features.
-BobC
Sign in to Reply
vaughanatworld
8/17/2011 5:16 PM EDT
I have been reading Crenshaw at least from the mid 90s since I have Embedded Systems Programming July 1996 on my desk in front of me (from my archive of back issues). The article is titled "Crenshaw on Filters". I love his writing.
My main point here is to encourage the completion of the Kalman fiter series. Hopefully that could be followed by a series on Wavelets. I can think of no better writer for these topics.
Regards
Brian
Sign in to Reply
Luke X.
8/19/2011 10:55 PM EDT
Dear Jack Crenshaw,
I just read "Let's Build a Compiler" written by you decades before. LBAC is the greatest article about learning compiler technique, and I love it so much. I found many comments on LBAC on the Internet, hoping there were a Chinese version, so that they could learn it easier. It would be great honor if I could translate it to Chinese and make it published.
I googled you but didn't find you Email address, so I write the comment here, wish you could see it some day. If you do see my message, please kindly contact me: leixure at gmail dot com.
Looking forward to your reply.
Regards,
Luke X.
Sign in to Reply
Leroy.Smith
8/22/2011 11:04 AM EDT
Nice article. I will look farther into mathcad. But now can you, please, give me an estimate.
Thanks,
Ceto150
Sign in to Reply
GGuess
8/28/2011 10:28 AM EDT
A big issue that needs addressed is PTC's excessively complex system of obtaining a license and requesting tech support. Even with a sales guy forwarding the phone call and promising immediate solution, it was more than 2 days to get a contact. My professional IT guys hate to deal with PTC and their web interface. Searching their database for help finds thousands of hits for all their products. There does not seem to be a method to only return MathCAD hits.
I like what MathCAD does, but PTC generates a lot of hate.
Sign in to Reply
Steve.Bepko
8/30/2011 1:38 PM EDT
I recently downloaded the MathCad Prime trial version, and tried to convert one of my (albeit complex) MathCad 15 worksheets. After 30 minutes of my CPU churning at 90% (Intel i5 mobile), I gave up. It did successfully convert some (much smaller) worksheets, but with the more complex one (80 pages, multiple embedded integrals, etc.) it essentially froze and only the first page was visible (all text). And for that matter, the text it did display was poorly formatted by the conversion software.
Sign in to Reply
RjonesConcurrent
3/29/2012 5:22 AM EDT
Hi Jack! Great article, and really interesting! It's always good to hear honest feedback about Mathcad and what features you love/hate! Have you had a look at the new features of Mathcad Prime 2.0 yet? Please visit my blog at http://www.concurrent-engineering.co.uk/Blog/ and leave your comments, it would be great to get your feedback!
Sign in to Reply