Mathcad Prime has remained the go-to tool for validation, verification, documentation and reuse of engineering calculations and users will soon be treated to the release of version 4.0. This upgrade promises to offer some all new features.
In this post, we’re going to give you a sneak peek at these new features and explain the benefits that the upgrade will provide.
Area Protection and Locking
Worksheets often consist of several different region types which are used to describe the engineering calculations you’re working on. As you’d expect, math regions contain the math, but you can also add text, solve blocks, plots and images.
Areas in Mathcad are regions in which several other regions can be stored in order to better organise your worksheet. These can also be expanded or collapsed, enabling users to take mathematical workings that aren’t needed and place them within an area that is subsequently collapsed.
The new Area Protection and Locking feature in Mathcad Prime 4.0 allows users to protect the content within any area by preventing other users from editing it (it can be password-protected, too). This means others can view the worksheet, but will be unable to change the contents. This is perfect where company-specific parameters exist that need to be included within the company Mathcad template but which shouldn’t be modified.
These protected areas can now have their display state locked, too. For example, you could protect and lock an Area while it’s in a collapsed state, which would mean that if someone else uses the worksheet, they’ll be unable to access anything within that particular area.
Equation wrapping
We all know that long equations can be tricky to digest, which will make equation wrapping a very popular update in Mathcad Prime 4.0. A highly visual feature, equation wrapping, makes long equations easier to read by wrapping the text as opposed to allowing it to continue across the page.
The length of equations can be structured so that they fit within boundaries and users can even split shorter equations onto separate lines for better readability.
Object Linking and Embedding
Otherwise known as ‘OLE’, Object Linking and Embedding enables Mathcad to act as a container in which users can embed other applications.
For example, if you need to sketch a bicycle design in your Mathcad worksheet, the Paint object can be embedded, allowing you to sketch a simple diagram using Paint’s functionality, right inside Mathcad.
Visio flowcharts, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides can also be embedded into Mathcad Prime 4.0. What’s more, all updates to the source files are kept current within Mathcad, providing a coherent user experience.
New copy and paste features
In Mathcad Prime 4.0, you can now copy multiple worksheet regions and paste them into third party applications. This enables users to maintain their layouts from Mathcad.
Content can also be merged with third party applications - for example, if you’re required to use Word to record design decisions, content can be easily moved from Mathcad to Word.
Performance improvements
A huge re-architecture project was undertaken during the development of Mathcad Prime 4 to ensure that large worksheets no longer slow the software down. During tests, operations that used to take ten seconds to complete are completed in under a second in version 4.0.
Whilst large worksheets could sometimes become unwieldy in earlier versions of Mathcad, this is no longer the case.
All release planning for PTC Mathcad Prime is based on user feedback, which is why these new features are so highly anticipated and accurate to users’ needs.
