Mathcad Prime shows PTC’s more ecumenical way of thinking in the Creo era.
PTC’s newest app is Mathcad Prime 1.0, the company’s engineering calculation software. The new application represents a break from the venerable Mathcad program, which PTC got in the acquisition of MathSoft in 2006 for $63 million. Many users worried about PTC’s commitment to Mathcad. Mathcad 15, released in June, 2010, has been described as a light upgrade to Mathcad 14 and users complained about PTC’s silence around Mathcad. As it turns out PTC was hard at work rewriting Mathcad and this month PTC has introduced version 1.0 of Mathcad Prime. The company has fired up the blogs, and both Mathcad new and old are getting plenty of attention from within and from outside the company.
Ern ray-tracing programs, including the OSLO program that we use in Physics 4150. It’s also important to note that for optical beams in a resonator, such as the curved-mirror cavities used for many simple lasers, the Gaussian beam is only the lowest-order solution. It's not optical ray tracing, but it does solve some problems that good ray tracing might be used for. I don't have a copy, so I can't tell you any more about it thanwhat is on the web site. If you find any ray tracing for Mathcad, I'd be interested myself. MATHCAD'S PROGRAM FUNCTION and APPLICATION IN TEACHING OF MATH DE TING WU Depart of Math Morehouse College Atlanta, GA.30314, USA dtwu@morehouse.edu 1. Introduction 1.1 About Mathcad Mathcad is one of popular computer algebra system (math software) in the world. In this section we 'll use Mathcad's program function to write programs to perform.
If this is the sort of thing you really want to do, you can do it with Mathcad
There is considerable grumbling. First, there are the Microsoft ribbon haters — they still hate the ribbon and they hate it in Mathcad, complaining that what used to take one click now takes several clicks. More serious are those who find the new version Mathcad Prime does not have critical features they need. PTC says it will take several versions for the new MathCAD to incorporate all the features of the old and suggests users keep Mathcad 15 around. The primary demand is for collapsible calculations to enable users to create complex calculations and then be able to hide all the details. They can then run the calculation for clients or colleagues with bothering them with the horrible details or without revealing the details to protect intellectual property. The new Mathcad Prime is not backward compatible with Mathcad 15, though there is a converter allowing users to convert their old Mathcad worksheets over to the new program.
Other missing features that have been highlighted by users include 3D plots, symbolics, math styles, and animation.
The people who love the new Mathcad Prime highlight its clean new look and interface — they are the people who do not loathe the ribbon and some who even like it. As some have pointed out, Mathcad Prime has been developed to attract new users and it interoperates with Excel and Creo Elements/Pro, which is Pro/Engineer. However, PTC is careful to acknowledge that Mathcad users come from a wide variety of disciplines and areas of study.
The focus of the new program is to get users up and running quickly, so the company highlights features like the task-based interface which helps users figure out how to use functions; it is designed to help users create design documents with complex calculations with standard math notations.
Mathcad Prime 1.0 is available now and the base price (without maintenance) is $1,195. People can also still get Mathcad 15 which sells for $1,270 with PTC eLearning University.
What do we think
Messing with Mathcad was probably a safe enough proposition for PTC. According to user comments, the software isn’t religiously upgraded — math is math, after all. But yeah, people are passionate about their tools and they’ll complain bitterly even if they had no plans to upgrade ever. This is a fine example of PTCs new, more ecumenical way of thinking and Mathcad is the perfect vehicle. The program is a broader math tool used for engineering problems and so it is used by engineers working with a variety of different tools and different CAD and analysis programs. Part of the ambition around the Creo regrouping is to attract users from outside the PTC world who will add PTC’s tools, including Mathcad, to their kit.
PropLab Pro
Mathcad Ray Tracing Programs Free
PropLab Pro 3 is available since 2007. It comes with a new interface. It is always the best simulation program available to date for the advanced amateur or the professional.
PropLab Pro is a down-sized version of IRI and includes also the International Geomagnetic Reference Field model (IGRF). It is dedicated to simulation at high resolution and with accuracy of ray-trace signals through a realistic two- or three-dimensional view of the ionosphere.
The ray-tracing mode is like hop-testing as it just goes forward for a given choice of radiation angle and the calculation stops if the trace is lost to infinity or stops in the vicinity of the receiver. But the main problem with that approach is that the hops may either fall short or go beyond the target, making it a slow, iterative process to get the path for RF from point A with point B. Beside that, the user would have to evaluate the suitability of the path, whether the number of E-hops would make it too lossy or otherwise.
The 2-D case comes fairly close to dealing with the problem in a proper sense by putting in the appropriate ionosphere for each hop on the path, considering date, time and SSN. But it does not take into account terrain, such as the slope of the ground nor the nature of the reflecting surface. Taking one hop at a time, the calculation does takes into account the change in height of the ionosphere but not any tilts or gradients. That is left for the 3-D case.
Mathcad Software
The three-dimensional ray-tracing is based on solving equations of motion for the ray path. There are equations for the path advance along and upward in the great-circle (longitudes) as well as the motion perpendicular to that plane, including the skewing of paths in the HF, mainly to take into account the magneto-ionic effect on the top band of 160 meters (Appleton's theory on gyration of ionospheric electrons).
Ray Tracing Method
Here are some features handled by PropLab Pro : Ionospheric Tilts, Chordal Hops, Non-Great-Circle Propagation, Spitzes, Effects of the Earth's Magnetic Field, Ordinary and Extraordinary Rays, Electron collisions, Electron density, Signal Ducting (Inter-Layer Reflections), Gray-Line Enhancements, Signal Strength of Ordinary or Extraordinary Rays, and global maps like MUF, FOT, including antenna radiation patterns.
Ray Tracing Method
Now at version 3, PropLab Pro is available for all Windows 32-bit platforms. License from $240. No trial version but a free manual is available. A forum is open to users.