Interview by: Chantale Marchand, Director of Marketing
Recently IMAGINiT began selling PTC's Mathcad product to our customers. Mathcad 15.0 was released at the end of June and is regarded as the most comprehensive engineering calculation software available.
IMAGINiT had the chance to sit down with Brent Edmonds, Director of Operations for Mathcad at PTC, to talk about how the product is helping engineering teams better collaborate while driving both personal and process efficiencies.
IMAGINiT: Brent, give us a 50,000 foot view of Mathcad.
Brent Edmonds: Mathcad is a desktop engineering tool that combines the different aspects of an engineer's daily workflow - text, images, graphs and plots, and most importantly mathematical calculations - into a single, document-centric application. Equations are rendered in natural math notation and units are automatically tracked, making the calculations readable, understandable and accurate; a Mathcad worksheet contains all the important information that goes into the conceptual design and verification and validation processes. The capabilities of the product have direct applicability to all engineers regardless of their discipline. It is a great tool that was designed specifically with engineers in mind.
I: Tell us a little bit about the product's inception.
BE: Mathcad was created in the 80's by an engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who wanted to create a tool that helped engineers solve complex equations. From the very beginning it was designed to be purely engineering focused. It was not intended to help teach math, but rather to help engineers solve their daily problems. It was designed to help engineers be more productive and accurate with their mathematical equations, to be more descriptive in the designs and assumptions that they consider during the design phase, whether that design be for a bridge, tunnel, building or mechanical part. Mathcad was acquired by PTC in April 2006, and in Feb 2007 Mathcad 14.0 was launched which was our first PTC release. Mathcad 15.0 was just launched at the end of June.
I: What type of calculations can Mathcad do?
BE: Mathcad can solve almost any type of mathematical calculation (the product comes with over 400 pre-defined functions, but users are free to define their own), but it is the flexibility beyond just math that gives Mathcad its real power. For example text, graphics, images, mathematical calculations in natural math notation can be pulled into the product to help derive the solution to an engineering problem. With these calculations recorded within the product, engineers are able to share and communicate that data with other engineers for the purposes of review, archiving for future reference, submission for any type of regulatory compliance their designs need to meet, validation of initial conceptual design assumptions, and comparisons against a prototype.
I: Sounds great. How do engineers do calculations if they are not using Mathcad?
BE: A lot of engineers still rely on their Excel spreadsheets to do their calculations. And believe it or not, some engineers still use the old fashioned method of tracking these calculations in a notebook. Sure Excel has some great features like pivot tables, but how are the calculations entered into a cell collaboratively reviewed by the rest of the engineering team? Where are the calculations archived in case of a future recall, design or structural issue? How are the calculations shared between the different stakeholders who use them in order to execute on the fabrication of a part or the building of a structure? Are these methods adequate for doing powerful, multi-tab, complex calculations? What happens if an error is introduced into the calculation? How complicated is the procedure to update the calculation once the error is identified and corrected? With Mathcad there is no need to do calculations in Excel and then move them to PowerPoint or Word for presentation or distribution. The traditional ways of doing calculations are so manual and leave a lot of room for error. Using a tool like Mathcad eliminates a lot of this as well as enables true collaboration between resources and groups.
I: You keep referring to Mathcad as a product that drives collaboration and efficiency. Can you elaborate on that a bit more?
BE: Sure. As Mathcad has evolved, it has moved into an enterprise-wide application that enables productivity as well as collaboration between engineering groups and departments. Mathcad has plug ins that leverage the collaboration capabilities found within the Sharepoint platform. Process productivity comes as a result. Now sets of conceptual designs can be shared throughout the organization from prototyping through to manufacturing and construction. When Mathcad is used as a standard tool to capture design, validation, calculations, design assumptions and initial parameters on the front end of the design process, it drives efficiencies and productivity within the organization. Data is captured in a human readable format that also enables optimization. Mathcad is auditable so that when calculations are shared, it can easily be determined how calculations are being derived.
Excel and Mathcad are complementary technologies. Excel is where an engineer should be storing tables of data, but Mathcad is where they should be pulling that data into in order to solve their calculations.
I: You talk about human readable formatting of data. How important is the human element still in doing calculations?
BE: One of the many things that makes Mathcad a human friendly tool is that it reflects the math engineers learned in school. There is no programming or proprietary language you need to know. It is easily recognizable. Mathcad is very unit aware which is helpful when doing calculations with combined units of measurement. Units can be attached to all values in an equation. Mathcad will carry the unit throughout your entire calculation. It doesn't just add the numbers, it calculates based on the units in which you want your results. Engineers can have the confidence that their calculations will be accurate versus having to do it manually which leaves room for error. Errors in mathematical calculations are hard to catch and once they are introduced, they impact every calculation from that point forward. So the human element is still very important and having a product that can do calculations the way you learned to do them and the way you want things to be calculated, is pretty compelling.
I: You launched Mathcad 15.0 at the end of June. Is there anything really exciting that you want to share with us?
BE: Mathcad 15.0 has great new capabilities around Design of Experiment (DoE). An engineer can run an almost limitless amount of experiments on a given design. With the new DoE capabilities, Mathcad will mathematically determine how a series of different parameters will affect the end result. This is helpful so that engineers can minimize the number of physical experiments that they need to run. Version 15.0 has 25 new functions that address different Design of Experiment practices which is helpful because an engineer can simply call out the function they need instead of having to do the calculations manually.
In addition to the DoE capability, Version 15.0 has a content partnership with Knovel, a company that digitizes paper-based engineering references and makes them available on the web. This will help engineers reduce the time it takes to solve complex equations as they can now quickly access many popular, standard engineering references right from the Knovel website, in standard Mathcad worksheets. Engineers don't need to build their calculations from scratch; they can choose a template that fits their equation specifications and take it from there.
I: How are customers realizing the benefits of Mathcad?
BE: In the AEC space, we have a great story about a customer called Hatch. They are actually using Mathcad not just as an individual desktop tool but they have made it their central repository for all data driven equations that the company produces. The report that comes out of Mathcad is the final report on the project. (Download: Hatch Africa Case Study)
Uni-Systems is a firm that specializes in developing moveable structures like those seen in sports stadiums and aerospace manufacturing facilities. One of their most recent projects was the Arizona Cardinals stadium in Glendale, AZ. They used Mathcad as their collaboration tool during the design process, sharing calculations with engineers and designers working on the other architecture, construction and engineering teams. (Download: Uni-Systems Case Study)
In the Mechanical or Manufacturing space, customers are using Mathcad to help with predictive engineering. They are able to use Mathcad in the digital concept phase to determine what their results are going to be before they go off and do physical prototypes. Mathcad shows you why things were designed the way they were, what the conditions and assumptions were that the design was built on. To read about how a manufacturer of sensors and sensor solutions is using Mathcad to test ideas for new products or advancements early on for their feasibility, click here. (Download: SICK Maihak GmbH Case Study)
CAD applications and Mathcad are complimentary programs. CAD tools show you how a product is going to look once it is fabricated while Mathcad helps you determine if a plane will fly before you build it. Mathcad sheds light on the entire engineering process, without it you have no clarity on the process, you are not sure what equations were used to make the assumptions you did. Further down the road, engineers can understand what they need to alter through referencing the calculations. If you have Excel or black box calculations, that audit process would take an eternity. In Mathcad it is easily accessible and archived for repair or replacement which is critical to the engineering process. This iterative process applies across industries - whether you are building a bridge with a life expectancy of 100 years or building a part with a shelf life of 2 to 3 years.
I: What if I want to try Mathcad before I buy?
BE: We have a 30 day trial version that is available for you to take for a test run. Another unique advantage of Version 15.0 is that the pricing includes the 1st year of maintenance which includes technical support, self help resources, upgrades, maintenance updates, discounts on Knovel Math, etc. Now is the time to get on board.
We are also showing Mathcad in two upcoming webcasts with IMAGINiT. One presentation will be tailored for a Manufacturing focused audience and one will be geared to an AEC audience. Here are the details:
Date: Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Time: 1:00 pm EST
Title: Introduction to MathCAD for Manufacturing
Presenter: John Sheehan, Mathcad VP of Technical Services, PTC
[Register]
Date: Thursday, August 5, 2010
Time: 1:00 pm EST
Title: Introduction to MathCAD for AEC
Presenter: John Sheehan, Mathcad VP of Technical Services, PTC
[Register]
I: What type of licensing options do I have?
BE: Mathcad can be purchased as an individual license or as a floating/concurrent license model. Either licensing option is available for download, or we can ship a CD to the customer depending on their preference. Special academic licensing is available for the academic market where pricing is more suited for the university budget. Products for academic use include an institution version which is intended to be installed in computer labs or a professor version which is intended for use by professors and/or in research. We also offer options for global licensing so that follow the sun engineering teams can have access to the product 24x7.
Contact your local IMAGINiT representative who can work with you to get the right version of the product in your hands and soon you too can harness the power of Mathcad.
