MathCad
MathCad
(OP)
I have observed that a number of folks in these fora make reference to, or frequently use, MathCad. This summer, I mentored a university student who is proficient in its use and who advised me that engineering students these days are all issued a graduation-date limited but full featured version of it for their course work. Being a guy approaching his final decade in his career, 90% of which has been in upstream oil and gas EPCM, I would like to ask if there is any merit to my buying and using this software, or if it would be just a "nice to have" thing.





RE: MathCad
I wouldn't want to live without it (the first release I had was 4 I think and the current is 15), but if you've gotten through a career without it I'm not sure how much it would add to your productivity. For 25 years I've been capturing useful equations that deal with units properly. That library is the main reason I use it so much. Without that I don't know if it would be worth the learning curve for you.
In the classes I teach (mostly overseas), new grads tend to have Mathmatecia and MatLab and Excel experience. Interesting that where you are at they're getting exposed to MathCAD.
David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering
In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist
RE: MathCad
Most of the stuff I do that isn't piping stress (for which I use CAESAR II or hand calculations), I use EXCEL or my TI-89-T. But if there are certain things that MathCad can do much better or more efficiently, I wouldn't mind exploring it.
RE: MathCad
And I think I'm pretty rusty at C programming these days, too...
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: MathCad
- It handles units very well. It can seamlessly handle unit conversions.
- It performs all calculations in standard mathematical type set, so it is very easy to validate all calculations by hand.
-It handles symbolic manipulations very well.
- There are a number of prebuilt reference/workbooks that are optional...my company paid for a number of reference books including Steam functions and Roark's Formulas for Stress and Strain.
As far as the "learning curve" goes, I'd place MathCAD between Excel and MATLAB for ease of learning / use.
RE: MathCad
Where possible, I tend to use Excel by preference since it's simpler, but switch to MATLAB when working with vectors, complex numbers and laplace transforms since these are clunky in Excel. I haven't spent a lot of time with MathCAD, and don't have a copy at present anyway.
RE: MathCad
i.e. it can do a lot more or less adequately & is usually available but even when the problem is a screw it starts to look like a nail.
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?
RE: MathCad
http://www.ptc.com/engineering-math-software/mathcad/free-download
RE: MathCad
Mathcad is my go-to program. There's usually no programming required, no missing semicolons, etc. The best features of Mathcad are:
> WSIWYG -- i.e., you write an equation that looks like an equation, and your calculations look like what you might have done on paper, and is immediately readable to anyone who understands the math. Like David, I use it every day, both at work and for helping with homework.
> UNITS!!! -- Mathcad (and sMath) is pretty much the only program that handles units natively and does unit conversions natively. Katmar published a VERY nice units converter many years ago, which I downloaded, and I've never had to use it. The only unit that I keep going for is the electron charge, which I finally got tired of looking up and inserted the definition directly into the Mathcad template file. One other program that can do units is TK!Solver, but that seems to have languished a bit. It does not do WSIWYG natively, or didn't, and had an add-on that created typeset equations.
> Solve block -- Given blah, find(x)= Numerical solutions to constraint or simultaneous equations are relatively easily done. This feature allows you to spend more time working the problem, rather than spending time setting up the equations. One really nice feature is that you can assign a solve block to a function, and then iteratively ask for solutions to a range variable, like h = 0 to 1 in steps of 0.1
> Numerical integration -- calculator do have this feature, but no UNITS!! Mathcad can do integrals and have the integrals look like integrals
> Completeness -- Mathcad, as currently sold, is fairly complete, in the sense that you can do most things that the program can do without add-ons. Matlab is annoying in that respect. While the base program is expensive, but not unreasonably so, adding toolboxes can easily increase the cost by factors of 10 or so.
> Programming -- you can do programs, but they're a bit cumbersome, but they're there.
> Symbolic math -- Mathcad used to have Maple as their symbolic solver, but they've since then migrated to muMath (I think) as the symbolic solver. It'll do OK, but it's nowhere in the league with full-up Mathematica or Maple.
> no brainer graphing -- on a blank sheet, you can type "@" to pull up a blank graph, type in an expression in the y-axis, and type x in the x-axis and voila!, you get a graph that defaults to -5 < x < 5 without doing anything else. I've recently used this a lot when helping my son with math homework
Did I mention UNITS!!? If for nothing else, this is alone is possibly worth the cost. I've used Mathcad on programs where the specifications came in an assortment of units: yd, mi, nmi, ft, km, in, etc. Completely seamless conversions; I can arbitrarily take inches divided by kilometers and know that the result is in radians and is correct. I've got coworkers that use Excel, and their spreadsheets are usually riddled with factors of 10^6, 3.28, 5280, etc., to do the units conversions. Bah! It's so easy to make a units error and spend precious time trying figure out why the answer is off. One thing that I often have to do is convert knot or mph to m/s or ft/s, and it's so easy in Mathcad, and allows me to answer some questions on this site with very little effort. The set below was my AP Physics teacher's favorite unit of speed. Note the unit conversions going on here.
TTFN
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RE: MathCad
http://www.maplesoft.com/solutions/engineering/
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RE: MathCad
RE: MathCad
To me it's a bit too vulnerable to GIGO for all but the simplest stuff.
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?
RE: MathCad
I use Excel because there are things it does really well. One thing I do a lot is use MathCad programming to write out a matrix and copy the matrix into Excel to plot it with a lot more functionality than the MathCad plotting functions. When I do have to do a 50 parentheses equation in Excel, I do it first in MathCad and check each stage of the answer before I believe the Excel version.
David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering
In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist
RE: MathCad
The text editor has nice colors and is user friendly (a sort of enhanced Notepad...). I have this in my company computer so I dont end up explaining them if I have a license or not since it is free.
Its easy to access (I have on my desktop a short cut to the editor) and then I can put in it any formula, iteration etc. ; usually make an output to an *.dat type of file, which I then edit in Excel if I need to make curves, graphs, fittings, whatsoever etc...
RE: MathCad
I love it because it handles UNITS like childs play, makes it VERY obvious if there is a mistake which my biggest complaint about excel, and it shows you equations in a way that you would write them on paper, for ease of following.
Download MathCad express, it has a 30 day free trial of the full version built in. Tinker with it. You'll love it.
-E
M.E.
RE: MathCad
Z
RE: MathCad
RE: MathCad
Sadly, that's true; Mathcad will probably never have presentation quality graphs like Excel. Although, high quality graphs would probably require yet another program, like SigmaPlot.
TTFN
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RE: MathCad
TTFN
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Need help writing a question or understanding a reply? forum1529: Translation Assistance for Engineers
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RE: MathCad
RE: MathCad
Z