Why I Upgraded to Mathcad Prime 6.0

There are two fundamental aspects of engineering calculations for me: first, there’s the work itself, and secondly, the presentation of the results. The latter can sometimes be more important than the former. The work is often for us to accomplish our assignments; the results are to influence others to agree with our conclusions. Here are four reasons I upgraded to Mathcad Prime 6.0 for improving the way I communicate results.

Chart Component Enhancements

Mathcad Prime 5.0 introduced the Chart Component for making high-quality, publication-ready 2D plots of your data. It’s easy to use and gives you more control over formatting every aspect of the chart: legends, axes, colors, and more.

However, there was one missing major capability: outputting the chart to a file. In Mathcad Prime 5.0, I would display the worksheet at a high resolution and then use Snagit Capture at a high resolution to save a Portable Network Graphics (.png) file.

Mathcad Prime 6.0 addresses this shortcoming. From the Chart Component editor, you now have the ability to output your image to:

• The major picture formats, including PNG, JPG, GIF, and BMP.
• Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF).
• Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), which allows you to perform additional editing of the images in software like Inkscape.

For example, in an earlier article, I analyzed whether my Philadelphia Eagles are subject to a curse. In retrospect, for communicating this information to others, the Chart Component would have been an excellent resource. Here are the results in a bar chart appropriate for a report or web page:

Example of a chart exported to PNG.

Other enhancements to the Chart Component in Mathcad Prime 6.0 include:

• The ability to zoom in and out while editing.
• More predefined Chart Layouts to speed up the process of making beautiful 2D plots.

Hyperlinks

Another major enhancement for communication is the ability to add hyperlinks to text. Documentation is a critical aspect of PTC Mathcad; we want to explain to others our logic and process. In the modern Internet age, we often reference information on the web or in our company’s internal pages. We might even want to reference CAD models stored in our data management system, like Windchill PDMLink.

Hyperlinks are a great way of cross-referencing our sources of information and directing others to related data.

Custom Margins

As I mentioned in the beginning, communicating my information to others is an important aspect of engineering calculations. Presentation and formatting are important. Mathcad Prime 6.0 added the ability to define custom sizes for the margins, header, and footer, giving me more control over getting my document to look exactly the way I want others to see it.

Printing

Whether I am working on engineering calculations or analyzing sports data, my worksheets can get pretty long. With engineering designs, I may be evaluating multiple scenarios or components within the same worksheet. When I’m looking at sports data, I could be slicing and dicing the numbers in various ways until I find something interesting. When I want to share this with someone else, I don’t want to give them a multi-page PDF and tell them, “Look at page 4 starting halfway down until the top of page 6.”

Mathcad Prime 6.0 now allows you to print – to paper or PDF – either specific worksheets or pages. This way you’re sharing exactly what you want people to see and pay attention to.

Download PTC Mathcad Prime 6.0

Those are my reasons for upgrading to Mathcad Prime 6.0: Chart Component improvements, hyperlinks, custom margins, and printing control. Download PTC Mathcad Prime 6.0 today to check out these and other advances in the software!

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