In case you missed it, here’s the newest version of PTC Mathcad Prime 8. It’s packed with new features to help engineers everywhere. Let’s find out more.
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PTC Mathcad Prime has always been the engineer’s favourite tool for solving, processing, recording and sharing their engineering calculations. But now, with the release of Mathcad Prime 8, PTC are taking it to the next level, with great features bringing you unmatched flexibility and control.
In this article, we’ll look at some of these features and how they make life easier for engineers everywhere.
Show Frame
The Show Frame function in Mathcad Prime 8 allows you to turn on borders for your worksheet's header, page body, and footer calculation areas. You will be able to see these borders in page view, printouts and PDF-format worksheets.
Partial derivative operator
Have you ever wanted to write expressions in terms of partial derivatives? With Mathcad Prime 8, you can insert and utilise a partial derivative operator in your worksheets. You can find this new feature in the Operators menu.
Redefinition warnings
When you switch on the new redefinition warnings feature in Mathcad Prime 8, any regions containing redefinitions will show you a warning, so you always know what’s going on. You can turn this feature on and off for every individual category of identifier, so you only see the warnings you want.
Copy and paste multiple values to combo-box
If you liked the feature in Mathcad Prime 7 that gave you a combo-box input so you could add drop-down menus with variable definitions to your worksheets, you’ll love the changes available in Mathcad Prime 8.
You can paste more than one variable value directly into the combo-box edit mode. Simply copy the values you need from a matrix, select the identical data size in your combo box, and paste. It’s as simple as that. You can also paste into a single value box and Mathcad Prime 8 will automatically paste the data from that location down and to the right. See how the combo-box instantly resizes to show you the new data.
Improvements to the numeric engine
With Mathcad Prime 8, PTC has upgraded the numeric engine again, including:
- Updated physical constants in line with CODATA and NIST, such as:
- Planck’s constant
- Reduced Planck’s constant
- Boltzmann constant
- Stefan-Boltzmann constant
- Rydberg constant
- Molar gas constant
- Avogadro's number
- Atomic mass unit
- Fine structure constant
- Elementary charge
- Magnetic flux quantum
- More helpful error messaging when functions (statespace, odesolve) are not configured properly
Improvements to the symbolic engine
Just like the numeric engine, Mathcad Prime 8 brings you new symbolic engine functionality, including:
- Further enhancements to symbolic integral transforms, with new use cases and better performance, such as:
- Fourier and invfourier
- Laplace and invlaplace
- Ztrans and invztrans
- Define normalisation and oscillatory factors with new nfact and ofact modifiers that you use with fourier keywork
- Enhanced performance and new supported use cases for calculus operators (limits, derivative, integrals)
- More use cases and improved performance for keywords (solve, rewrite, series, simplify, assume)
- Undefined variable handling functionality improved in symbolic results, including better automated labelling of free undefined variables and lambda expressions
Windows 11 support
Mathcad Prime 8 is certified compatible with Windows’ newest OS – Windows 11 version 21H2.
Save as HTML
With Mathcad Prime 8, you can save legacy Mathcad 15 worksheets as HTML files, so you no longer need an older Mathcad to see old content in order to convert it. Instead, simply use the Save as HTML option in the converter to view your legacy worksheet, convert it to Prime format and rework it if you need to before validation.
Improved useability
Finally, Mathcad Prime 8 is easier to use than ever. Here’s how Mathcad Prime 8 has changed from earlier versions to make life simpler for you:
- You can use the Ctrl or wheel zoom to focus in and out on worksheets
- The zoom slider automatically works on 5% increments with the + and – buttons
- The Close button allows you to close worksheets while in the worksheet tab
- Unsaved worksheet signal – For worksheets you haven’t saved yet, an asterisk will appear
- New context menu available on all worksheet tabs, including buttons for:
- Calculate
- Close
- Move
- Copy full file path
- Open containing folder
- Save As
- Drag and move worksheet tab – Arrange the order of worksheets the way you want
- Clear text format command – Revert selected text to default text format
We hope you’ll love all the great features on Mathcad Prime 8 and that it drives you to better results. If you’d like to learn more about Mathcad, you can sign up for the free trial using the button below:
