Editor’s Pick: PTC Mathcad Prime 4.0 Released

Dear DE Reader:

“Venerable” can be a tricky word. It’s meant to convey great respect due someone or something because of their wisdom, skills and sterling character, but it often seems flopped out there to assuage old faculty members and actors being shuffled out to pasture. Yet, in its best sense, no better word than venerable describes the toolset in focus as today’s Editor’s Pick of the Week.

PTC Mathcad Prime engineering math software has 30-something years of continuous development and field use that has honed its features. From the beginning, it has been the digital version of the engineer’s notebook where you create engineering calculations, convert units, and validate and document your handiwork.

PTC has introduced version 4.0 of PTC Mathcad Prime engineering mathematics software. New capabilities for securing data in shared worksheets, equation wrapping and enhanced OLE support are among key new features. Image courtesy of PTC Inc.

PTC recently released PTC Mathcad Prime version 4.0, and this toolset shows no sign of letting up with improved and expanded capabilities across its major features whether mathematical notations, units intelligence and plotting, graphing and so on. Version 4.0’s enhancements sound like they should improve the software’s overall performance while helping you build and share calculations with third parties and across applications more smoothly.

Sharing worksheets sees a couple of new functions improving data protection. One lets you set areas of your worksheet so that people can see what’s going on but edit nothing. A second new feature collapses data from view entirely and locks it down from view from all except authorized users.

PTC Mathcad Prime 4.0 introduces enhanced OLE (object linking and embedding) support. This will let you insert content from other applications into your worksheets as well as copy and paste regions of your worksheet into a Word document.

One new feature long-time users will like is equation wrapping. It’s now much simplified, and you can wrap equations as you type. Wrapping does not affect your calculations, but it should make your documents and worksheets easier to build and read.

PTC Mathcad Prime has always been geared to the necessities of engineering calculation development and documentation. Among adherents, it’s an esteemed member of the engineering toolkit said to be much easier than a spreadsheet for the job.

You can test that thesis by downloading the complimentary, lightweight version called PTC Mathcad Express from a link at the end of today’s main write-up. Choose the 30-day full functionality option for a trial of PTC Mathcad Prime 4.0. So hit today’s Editor’s Pick of the Week link, learn about version 4.0 then take it for a drive. Well worth it.

Thanks, Pal. – Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood

Editor at Large, DE