General Calculation Software

[Mech151]

We are looking at switching from Mathcad to some other software for calculations. A plus would be enhanced matrix manipulation capabilities, visualization capabilities etc. But, the first requirement is to have similar capabilities to mathCAD in presenting simple calculations (and handling unit conversions).

I am looking at Maple, Matlab, and Mathematica. Are there any other softwares I should be considering? Any comments on these softwares?
Thanks,
Mason

 

[IRstuff]

Wolfram also makes CalcCenter 3, which sells for about $600

TKSolver
MuPad


TTFN

 

[GregLocock]

Nothing is as directly readable, for active equations, as MathCad unfortunately. Yo might find several threads discussing this and similar themes using the search function.

Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[mrMikee]

I've used CalcCenter for about 3 years and have found it to be a very good calculation system. My son has used Mathcad for about 10 years and during his graduate work was probably pushing the limits of Mathcad, at least that's how it seemed to me. Mathcad makes nice looking output, CalcCenter (Mathematica) does not. In fact you could find several posts in this forum with me complaining about that.

But you should try it, you may like it too. There is a trial version available (I think for 14 days.) I used to do all my programming in Visual Basic but but now use CalcCenter for almost all my calcs. Usually it's faster with CalcCenter but for long programs or for output that I want to look good, I would still like VB. Note that CalcCenter is considerably cheaper than the others you mentioned. I find it very complete for my needs even though it contains only about half of the commands in Mathematica.

Regards,
-Mike

 

[DaveVikingPE]

I have a Macintosh at home and have tried out and kind of like Maple. If MathCAD still supported (loong time ago) a mac version, well... However, as GregLocock says, MathCAD is the champion. It's so good that I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft buys it just to make sure we all don't abandon Excel.

 

[IRstuff]

I don't see that happeninng anything some. Excel's charting capabilities are still light-yrs ahead of Mathcad's

TTFN

 

[dontthinktwice]

If you are leaning towards Matlab, you should consider Python with numpy and matplotlib. They can handle nearly everything that Matlab can, as long as you aren't interested in the plugins (symlink, etc).

As an added advantage, Python is a much more general language than Matlab, so you may find it useful for many other things. For instance, I have scripts that collect data from our network, generate plots, find interesting trends, and generate a PDF report, all automatically.

 

[yakpol]

TK solver may be worth considerations... with excel as a front face.

http://www.uts.com

 

[sdz]

Our company has started using Tedds which seems to be similar to MathCad but works in a MS Word environment.

See

http://www.cscworld.com/

If you are in Australia contact robert.danis@cscworld.com

 

[Feric]

Hi there:

How about using MS Office Suite to do some of the calculations and plotting -- for example, MS Excel and MS Access ...

Thnaks,

Gordan Feric, PE
Engineering Software

http://members.aol.com/engware

 

[PSE]

I do not know if this will take you directly to the mathematics projects listing but sourceforge offers a wide range of open source (free) software. Support may be a bit sporadic on some but I have found some useful tools before.

http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=98

Regards,

 

[peteswift]

For the work that I do the best thing about MathCAD is that you can make the calcs look similar to the ones you would do by hand. However MathCAD now has a lot of features that I simply would not use. My wish is for a basic MathCAD just to do simple mechanical engineering calcs. £600 is a lot to spend for something that, I would have to have 3 seats for each engineer, which would be used only for say 3 days per month per person. I have not yet found a suitable alternative.

 

[GregLocock]

Agree with your points - MathCAD is the best, it is expensive, and it is now bloated.

If you can stand Matlab style scripts then there are several free alternatives - Octave is the closest to Matlab syntax, whereas Scilab is the most powerful and has a large and active community. There are also others such as Maxima.

My problem with matlab and similar languages is that they are too clever for their own good, reading other people's scripts is murder.








Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[peteswift]

I had a go with the Tedds lite but it does not allow you to start with new calculations is this easy?
Most of the things we would be doing are one offs –shafts levers etc can it do this. Also on the web site there is no mention of cost.