Is Mathcad Dying?

June 16th, 2009 | Categories: math software, mathcad | Tags:

I’ll start off this post by mentioning that I don’t like PTC’s Mathcad very much and
think that is a very weak product compared to its competitors.  Professionally I have had
a lot of grief with it and personally I cannot see why anyone who can also choose from
Mathematica, MATLAB and Maple (and I am lucky enough to be in this position)
would ever bother with it. Most of the things I choose to write about Mathcad concern
its bugs.

So, read the following in the knowledge that the writer is heavily biased.

Just recently I have found myself wondering if the product is doomed.  Let’s look at the
evidence.

 PTC’s Mathcad hasn’t seen a major new release in over 2 years.  Version 14 was
released on 12th February 2007 and since then its competitors have gone from
strength to strength.  In the same time MATLAB has seen 5 major new releases
going from 2006b to 2009a and Mathematica has been improved beyond
recognition in the transformation from version 5.2 to 7.01.  Then we have Maple
which was at version 11 back in 2007 and is now at version 13.

Before anyone states the obvious, yes I know version numbers on their own mean very
little but the increase in functionality in Mathcad’s competitors over the last 2 years or
so has been substantial whereas Mathcad itself has gone nowhere.

 MathCad’s symbolic engine, Mupad, has since been bought by rival math
software vendor and maker of MATLAB, The Mathworks.

When I first started working with Mathcad, it came with a cut-down version of the
Maple kernel which took care of all of its symbolic calculations.  There was nothing
particularly unusual about this as several other maths packages did exactly the same
(MATLAB’s symbolic toolbox immediately springs to mind) but in the transition from
v13 to v14, Mathcad swapped the Maple Kernel for Mupad.

Mupad was a nice product and, although there were problems with the transition,
Mathcad could have done a lot worse in its choice of symbolic engine.  Of course, since
version 14 of Mathcad was released the owners of this symbolic engine, Sciface
Software, were completely bought out by MATLAB makers, The Mathworks, and now
The Mathworks use Mupad as the basis for their symbolic toolbox.

So where does that leave Mathcad?  Will The Mathworks strike a licensing deal with
PTC for the Mupad technology or will PTC have to find a replacement symbolic engine
for version 15 of Mathcad?

 The maintenance releases don’t add very much

Every software manufacturer has maintenance releases which tend to be little more than
a set of bug-fixes and extra tidbits of functionality to keep users happy between major
releases.  Although we shouldn’t expect too much of them – we at least expect
something worth justifying the download.  Here is the changelog from the latest
maintenance release of Mathcad – Mathcad M030.

New features
* Windchill 9.1 M010 Workgroup Manager (WGM) support
* New installer – You can now customize your Mathcad installation by selecting the
language, components, and directories.
* User interface translation into Russian
Problems fixed in Mathcad 14 M030
* 1436139: Addresses specific problems involving rapid consumption of memory upon
repeated recalculation of a worksheet.
* 1502717: Fixes improper result returned when evaluating 2^31.
* 1507803 Addresses a specific memory leak issue relating to an uninitialized handle.
* 1507032 Addresses a compatibility problem resulting from an improvement in how
numeric tolerance in integrals was inferred.
* 1547641 Fixes PDF file generation problem on Window XP x64 machines.
* 1437427 Fixes in-line evaluation to update display to match available value.
* 1587915 Addresses a WRITEPRN restriction by increasing the maximum allowable
string length from 128 to 1024.
* 1403321 Addresses specific memory release issue involving large worksheet
computations.

Although I am sure this is good news for Russian users I have to say that I’m
underwhelmed!

So what do you think – Is Mathcad doomed or am I making a big fuss over nothing?
Comments from Mathcad users are particularly welcomed.

MathCad Prime 3.1

http://getintopc.com/softwares/maths/ptc-mathcad-prime-3-1-iso-free-download/

MathCad 15

http://www.ptc.com/engineering-math-software/mathcad/free-trial