Calculation software promotes innovation

Mathcad 13 delivers a compelling option to cryptic and error-prone spreadsheets and proprietary programming languages that are difficult to learn and use.

Mathsoft Engineering and Education, the leader in calculation management, has released a new version of Mathcad - the world's most widely used calculation software - that promotes innovation and improves productivity by capturing and re-using knowledge locked in engineering calculations.

The new offering, Mathcad 13, provides expanded support for the Mathsoft Calculation Management Suite, the first enterprise software solution designed to help organisations drive innovation and profit from their quantitative engineering information.

Building on the advances of Mathcad 12, such as its XML and Net support, and Mathsoft's two decades of calculation technology, Mathcad 13 enables engineering and product development innovation through more efficient creation and management of critical engineering information.

With Mathcad 13, engineers can document and capture their calculations, analyses, and engineering-critical values while they create them.

Mathcad 13 delivers a compelling option to cryptic and error-prone spreadsheets and proprietary programming languages that are difficult to learn and use.

As such, it saves engineers the time and effort of developing custom applications that can be too complicated for the vast majority of calculation jobs.

"Information Technology can play an important role in the innovation process", said Gartner Research Director Marc Halpern.

"For example, while a class of applications like product lifecycle management lets companies model, analyse, and manage designs, we see a growing need for manufacturers to capture, manage and reuse the underlying design rationale".

"Mathematics is the language of that design rationale for engineered products, and calculations underpin design decisions".

Available today, Mathcad 13 contains new and enhanced features that streamline key engineering tasks for individuals and teams, creating more time for innovation.

For example, Mathcad 13 includes powerful new program debugging capabilities, including the ability to insert traces and step through program loops, to enhance auditing and verification.

It includes improved 2D plot graphics with an easy-to-use customisation menu for special line types, symbol markers and colours.

A new Autosave feature prevents design engineers from losing valuable work, and new error messages pinpoint mathematical errors that design engineers may have otherwise overlooked.

Mathcad 13 for the first time supports nonlinear units such as Fahrenheit, Celsius and decibels, and enables customers to create custom units via an easy-to-use menu.

These features are amplified by significant performance improvements over prior versions, making design engineers more productive across all of their calculation activities.

Mathcad 13 also includes a powerful new class of "provenance" capabilities, enabling organisations to determine conclusively the source of a particular calculation, value or result, including those in engineers' annotations.

Mathcad's provenance capabilities ensure engineers' work is fully traceable and auditable.

"Mathcad 13 is a tremendous improvement in the state of the art", said Brian Patterson, Electrical Engineer at Panasonic Plasma Display Laboratories of America.

"The new graphing enhancements allow us to make much cleaner presentations: with the new dual y-axis capability, we can plot feedback gain and phase lines to be displayed in a single graph".

"The performance gains enable us to perform iterative calculations on our magnetic component designs even faster".

"And as always, we're relying heavily on Mathcad's ability to display mathematical expressions in their natural form with informative annotations to assist reuse and collaboration".

Mathcad 13 is a key component of the Mathsoft Calculation Management Suite, helping designers and engineers create and capture the valuable engineering calculation information that the suite centrally manages for reuse, auditing, oversight, publishing and collaboration throughout the entire development process.

The other key component of the suite is Designate, a framework for storing, viewing, searching, reporting, auditing and publishing an organisation's Mathcad worksheets, all from a Web browser.

"Mathcad 13 gives organisations the tools to treat their calculations as the strategic asset that they are, from the user's desktop to the workgroup and up to the executive level", said Mathsoft CEO and President Chris Randles.

"The capabilities we've built into Mathcad 13 make the front-line engineer's work easier".

"Mathcad 13 also delivers higher-level benefits to engineering organisations because it improves productivity, compliance and innovation".

"These benefits have a direct - and positive - effect on the entire company's profitability".

90% of Fortune 1000 companies, 500 government agencies and 2000 colleges and universities around the world use Mathsoft solutions to capture the strategic value in their engineering calculations.

Mathcad is the choice of more than 1.8 million engineers in over 50 countries.

Mathcad 13 is available now at a list price of GBP 665 per user ($1195), with an upgrade price of GBP 200 to GBP 235 ($325 to $425), depending on current version used.

Mathcad is available on a volume basis, as part of the Calculation Management Suite, as well as at special prices for government and academic institutions.

Single users requiring upgrades or new seats and academic institutions should contact Adept Scientific for more information on purchasing.

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