PTC Mathcad Reviews

This product provides me with an elegant solution to analyzing complex structural engineering problems while in the same step providing output in a professional presentation. I espsecially am fond of the ability to perform matrix mathematics, allowing me to analyze and compare multiple combinations of conditions without the tedium of trial and error.

The newer versions of this software seem to have taken a few steps backward in the manner in which they allow the user to format the final output. Page margins are no longer infinitely definable, but are not set to a select few setups. My customer expect to see their logo in the header of the final document. This was not a problem in the older version due to the flexible formatting options. The newer version, however, limits what I can, and cannot, efficiently use in the header. The net result is a bit less attractive output than what was once possible.

Depending on the detail requirements of your presentations, you may wish to wait for release of the next version. Each subsequent version gets closer to providing what the older version used to have.

After analyzing a customer's design, many times I am required to provide formal documentation of the analysis. With MathCAD, this process is almost automatic, and since nothing gets transposed, the potential for introduced errors is virtually eliminated. Customers really appreciate the professional looking presentations, hence they continue to come back when they have future projects.

Mathcad it like a smart piece of paper, where you can write out any mathematical expression and use it throughout your work. It's incredibly user friendly, for those who have a mathematic background, and formalized your work giving it a more professional and neat look.

Currently I haven't run into any major issues with Mathcad, only when I need to update to the newest version I deal with some minor changes to the program that make starting out a little more difficult. Having a cheat sheet of changes per version would be helpful.

I use Mathcad to solve Lengthy Stress analysis formulas for major Natural Gas line projects. it determines the stress inflicted on pipes when installed during construction and during its operation.

This program has been so beneficial that we've created a smart template in Mathcad where we can reuse the same file on muiltiple projects, only needing to change the variables inputted. It makes the pocess much more efficient and saves time.

I really like the simplicity of moving variables and the aesthetics that I can create with the sheets, and the simplicity of creating sheets and sharing or reusing to perform iterations of calculations. I spent the entire summer in MathCAD and feel like I've just barely scratched the surface of its capabilities.

One thing that drives me crazy about MathCAD is that I have not figured out how to make my variable flush/left-justified, making my sheets just slightly disheveled looking. We NEED a Mac version. Not sure if I want to run parallels.

My internship in bridge design used MathCAD to make sheets for the design of an entire bridge, from superstructure to substructure; during my summer I designed an RCDG bridge and realized that the collaboration through MathCAD, used by EITs and licensed engineers (I was supervised by an EIT), made the calculations so much more efficient and faster.

Very easy to use for most calculations. The equations are displayed in "text book" fashion. Easy to read through the equations. Good examples given within the software.

The programming mode is cumbersome and non intuitive.

Graphing is cumbersome.

Capability from earlier versions such as drop down and radio buttons not available in the new Prime Version

This software is good but it has moved to a subscription mode;. Files created by older versions of the software need to be converted for use iby the new version. Some manual corrections my be required in some instances. Converted files cannot be opened by older software. Upgraded versions are promised but generally the releases miss the advertised release dates.

Power System Protection Calculations.

I love that you can solve math problems easily using this product.

Sometimes the solve block feature doesn't work as well as you might hope. It sometimes doesn't like if one number is too close to another, and will not work properly unless the spacing is correct.

I would recommend that you either watch tutorials on how to use this product or talk with someone you know that has used it in the past. I learned how to use this product almost five years ago, and can still easily pick the software back up and use it again.

I have used this to do homework for physics and differential equations, and have used it to solve functions that have multiple variables.

It is easy to use and quick for doing calculations (especially repetitive calculations). Additionally, it allows for quick changes in said calculations if you want to adjust values or are required to do the calculation multiple times.

Special values (like pi) or specialty statement (like if statements) can be confusing to learn, but otherwise I love it.

It is great for anything from complex and competitive calculations to simple things like unit conversions.

I solve engineering problems with MathCAD. It is an extremely powerful tool. My company has developed a number of multi-use MathCAD sheets to perform a number of calculations quickly and effectively. The interface is relatively basic/stripped down and easy to use. The visuals/graph printouts are not necessarily nice to look at, but they are accurate and effective and I do not believe the goal of the product is to be extremely visually appealing, but rather to provide an accurate and effective way to perform repetitive tasks. It is very valuable when calculations or inputs within the calculation need to be adjusted.

Compared to other math/ calculation software this has the ability to input text and units much more flexibly. Other software such as Maple is much more restricted in how you can put in text, the free form of mathcad is much easier to use.

Especially like it for performing design calculations for reports.

One dislike would be the cost of the software. Another would be the lack of mac compatibility. We use a fair number of macs and its currently not possible to install mathcad on them.

Great, would recommend using it for report preparation and design calculations.

Generally this is being used for engineering calculations. Primarily civil and structural. The main benefit realized is speed and clarity of report writing. The ease of checking calculations is also great.

Intuitive interface and workflow. You use MathCAD just like you would hand-write equations.

There's a lot of cross-over functionality and multiple ways to do the same thing. This can easily get confusing and I often end up mixing different methods together before I realize it! Also, the new versions seem to have broken much of the functionality we've come to rely on. We are sticking with v14 (even though it's unsupported) until PTC fixes all the issues with the latest versions.

Look elsewhere (Mathematica, perhaps) until PTC irons out all the bugs related to the switch to the new versions.

MathCAD is great for churning out heavy calculations that are extremely tedious to do by hand. Our typical design documentation has a MathCAD worksheet as a part of it, and our customers like knowing this "paper analysis" is backing up the designs we create for them.

This software is powerful, and beautiful. I like to use MathCAD as an engineering word document. Create organized explanations of your steps and solve calculations that would take pages by hand in one line.

The software takes a small learning curve.

Understand the right use of Mathcad. Mathcad is not as powerful at solving equations as other competing programs, but does present the work in a more intuitive way.

Mathcad is most successful replacement for the piece of paper hand calculations. Great for communicating the calculations you make to your colleagues and design critiques.

It is in fact an advanced engineering calculator. If you need a very quick mathematical calculation with a graphical output with a minimum efforts, then MathCAD is the best option. MathCAD is a very good alternative to Microsoft Excel. It is really easy to use. It has a clear logical structure and user-friendly interface. It contains a set of quicksheets describing all standard tools and their effective application. It can be applied to any area of engineering including statistics, matrix calculus, differential equations, data analysis, programming, etc.

MathCAD is not a CAD product as we used to understand it. It is a essential mathematical application, which is designed for engineering. It has distinctive features, which make it different from other mathematical product such as Maple, Matlab, Mathematica. Its main purpose is mathematical calculus, not computer aided design. The only disadvantage of MathCAD compared to other math. products is that it has a bit less developed features of symbolic calculus. Systems of differential equations can also be solved numerically. But solvers are less stable and advanced then in math. products.

MathCAD is a "must have" application for a mechanical engineer. It replaces Excel in problems, when an advanced mathematical calculus is required. Its main benefit is a quick implementation of the task with a good and clear visualisation of the results.

Primary application of MathCAD is data processing and mathematical calculus. It complements Microsoft Excel in tasks, when a more advanced calculus is required. Formulas of any complexity can be programmed in MathCAD with output into diagrams and tables. In many cases it is more preferable than Excel, since mathematical engine is more advanced. MathCAD is very good for data fitting, complex functions input, solutions of non-linear equations, numerical integration of ODEs.

the visual setup makes it incredibly easy to understand

like being able to mix units

txt output is incredibly valuable for automating cad designs

would be good to have a code compiler

tends to crash if being used for long periods of time or sometimes crashes when using find function in collapsed regions

quick and easy to learn/teach to engineers

designs can be made quickly and easily

the process of outputting scripts has allowed us to automate autocad drawings of our systems

The ability to explicitly write equation and define variables as you would on paper. Easy to use functions that make it a seamless interface.

If incorrectly entering a formula or code, it is difficult at times to identify the error

Very helpful calculation software.

Makes solve time-intensive equations simple and fast. It saves a great amount of time.

I appreciate the graphical format of the program, allowing for complex calculations while maintaining a visual approach to problem-solving.

I dislike the clarity of warning notifications if a calculation is unclear. Additionally, I wish it had been made clear when first using the product that the order of computations is an integral component to achieving the correct answers.

Ensure there is an administrator well-versed in the program to guide others in their initial uses of the program.

In my experience, we use the product to preform analytical chemistry calculations in an academic laboratory setting. Initially, most users encounter a strong learning curve understanding the product. My prior experience using MatLab software lessened the severity of the learning curve; however, use of the program requires strong guidance and is not innate based on the program interface.

In basic terms, MathCAD is a very advanced scientific calculator. It is capable of doing a lot more that Excel can do in a lot simpler way. It is especially useful when solving complex differential equations and statistics problems. The interface is easy to understand for the user and the output is easy enough to understand for non-technical people.

It's slightly hard for a new user to learn this tool. The lack of tutorials makes it even more difficult.

It'll take some time for anyone to get used to this software but you'd be able to realize its full potential as soon as you start understanding the interface.

Making complex engineering calculations and generating graphical results.

I like the ability to layout the equations and reuse equation sheets. There is also the option to share mathcad files among coworkers to make it easy for everyone to do their work. I find the equations you write are presented exactly as if they were done on paper.

The formatting can be difficult and unintuitive. The sheets can easily get messy if you don't format it as you go. I find that the program can slow down quite a bit if there are a lot of sheets in a file.

Lots of online tutorials on google and youtube.

I used this program mainly for foundation design and structural analysis equations.

MathCAD is feature heavy and is very suited for simple algebraic and trigonometric equation solving. Our company utilized this software to create calculation tools that allowed a user to simply enter inputs in the form of dimensions from an engineering drawing, and receive outputs in the form of calculated information about the design. The calculations were instant and were able to be presented in a easy enough form for anyone to understand.

MathCAD is not a very aesthetically pleasing program. The GUI looks like it's straight out of the Windows 98 days. In addition to this, functions may be very difficult to locate. There were many times where I had to comb through many menus and windows, and look to google in order to find the function that I was looking for.

Formatting of a document for printing is often difficult, as the calculation space is not optimized for printing. This is evident in the page margins of the document. Accidentally spilling a character a few pixels over the margin would result in the printing of a brand new page with a single character on it. The software does not alert to this, or attempt to fix this.

This program was used to perform calculations based on inputs from the chemical engineering department for use in designing pressure vessels by the mechanical engineering department. The use of this software allowed for the writing of calculation tools that drastically reduces the number of hand calculations required. This resulted not only an increased productivity, but also in accuracy as well.

Very useful for civil/structural/forensic engineering design calculations, computations, and design documents.

Interface has deteriorated since PTC bought mathsoft a few years back. Older versions were far more intuitive and were not riddled with computational errors whilst performing important engineering calculations.

Seek older versions created by mathsoft rather than the newer PTC versions.

Structural design considerations. Saves hours of computations requiring little time checking results.

Most helpful tool at work which saves a substantial amount of time which would otherwise be carried out with hand

Sometimes it returns an error when there are some extra spaces in between the formulas. The auto correct feature doesn't pick them.

Calculation of various stresses on a component including bending, torque and von misses stresses. Easy formatting made it real quick to convert in a PDF form and share it with clients.

I love that it will convert units for you. Proper units are very important in engineering!

Typing all of the variables over and over can get very tedious

Some people might like other spreadsheet programs, but there is definitely a time for Mathcad.

This tool is great for engineering design calculations. I have used it for bridge design.

This software is incredible.

- Intuitive user interface

- Units tracker

- Display of engineering notation

- Units converter

There is not much that I dislike about the software.

There are lots of youtube videos that show you how to use it. Watch them, and practice with it.

Documentation of Business IP and data.

Carrying out engineering calculations without fear of unit errors (Mathcad tracks all the units for you).

Ability to follow a sequence and simplicity of the check process.

Some complex equations take a while to process and may freeze up the screen.

Versatile, step by step problem-solving software.

Variety of structural engineering analyses and designs.

Flexibility to create spreadsheets. Our DOT have a vast library in Mathcad for engineering calculations that we routinely use

Printing format is not very user friendly. Icons could use an update. Learning curve is steep for new users, more tutorials could help.

Try to learn it while at school. Don't get overwhelmed with the not so friendly icon and menu bar layouts.

Templates have been created to perform repetitive calculations faster and more easily