Editor’s Pick: Maplesoft Releases New Versions of Maple and MapleSim

By Anthony J. Lockwood

Dear Desktop Engineering Reader:

There are gold standards in the engineering and scientific software business. Maple from Maplesoft is one of them. So, when a new version of Maple is released, you know that everything about mathematical computation systems has advanced again. With the simultaneous release of MapleSim 4 you also know that an emerging standard in physical modeling and simulation has advanced. This is good news for engineers designing, modeling, and simulating real-time and hardware-in-the-loop applications, scientists performing cutting edge research, and students training for careers in engineering, science, and mathematics.

The Maple symbolic computational engines lie at the heart of most every application offered by Maplesoft as well as many third-party applications that you rely upon. A cool enhancement in Maple 14 is a new methodology – well, system, really—for creating, sharing, and receiving technical documents through an integrated environment. They call it the MapleCloud Document Exchange. Basically, MapleCloud lets you leverage a cloud server for sharing and storing Maple technical documentation as well as – love this— translating those documents with Google translate on demand.

Maple, naturally, is at the core of MapleSim, providing its advanced symbolic computation engine, numeric solvers, and the technical document interface. A key enhancement in MapleSim 4 is a new 3D construction environment for developing multibody models. This feature can save you time and effort in a number of ways. First, it renders your multibody system dynamically as you build it. This, of course, means that you get instant feedback on what you’re doing so you can get yourself out of trouble early and often. Second,  you can add and fiddle around with multibody components directly in the 3D workspace.

Both MapleSim 4 and Maple 14 have been enhanced with all sorts of new features. MapleSim has these probe management tools that let you add new probes to existing simulation results without making you rerun the simulation. And Maple 14 has a bunch of new control system design and linearization tools as well as  new solvers to help you explore different design techniques.

You can learn about many of the enhancements in the new versions of Maple and MapleSim from today’s Pick of the Week write-up. But what I suggest that you really need to do is hit the links and watch some videos –  most are registration-free. There’s also a link to sign-up for an evaluation copies MapleSim 4 and Maple 14. If you go to the product web pages, you’ll find freely available applications stories, in-depth examples, and links to webinars (registration required), training videos, and all sorts of stuff. A ton of it really.

And a ton of good stuff is a pretty good way to sum up MapleSim 4 and Maple 14. Both are products that define their class. Both have been upgraded in intriguing ways. Learning about them is a good use of your time.

Thanks, Pal.—Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood
Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering

Read today’s Pick of the Week write-up.