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With a Windows 95-compliant interface, more mathematical power, innovative
technologies for integrating applications and new capabilities for
Web-based collaboration, new Mathcad 7 Professional sets a new standard for
calculation software. When deployed as a departmental standard, Mathcad 7
Professional provides a unified framework for collaborative projects,
streamlining activities and boosting the overall efficiency and accuracy of
engineering, design and development processes.
Mathcad 7 Professional has been designed to work together with other popular
desktop applications, including word processors, spreadsheets, databases,
graphics and technical software. A much enhanced range of data input and output
filters allows users to exchange data between Mathcad and Microsoft®
Excel, MATLAB,
Axum® and many other programs. Powerful Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technology, including the most advanced OLE Automation interface on the market, makes it easy to embed live Mathcad 7 Professional worksheets into a word processor or database, or an Excel or Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet into a Mathcad document, and edit them in place.
"When Mathcad was originally introduced, it leapfrogged existing tools, such as calculators and spreadsheets, and it has given over a million technical users and students a powerful product designed especially for their needs," said Paul Sloane, MathSoft's Vice President of International Sales. "With Mathcad 7, we've launched a new generation of technical calculation software, which goes beyond advancing the productivity of a single user and focuses on integrating the complete set of applications and people that comprise technical projects. Mathcad 7 is the new standard environment where all the pieces of a technical project come together, uniting applications and outcomes, team members and ideas."
Mathcad 7 Professional's new MathConnex technology provides a means of managing this environment. MathConnex is a modelling module that lets users create a computational system made up of different elements from different users, departments and applications. Colleagues can work simultaneously on different components of a project using a variety of software tools - Mathcad, Axum, MATLAB, spreadsheets and more - to create both static and dynamic models and systems. MathConnex automatically records and integrates each component of the project, making Mathcad 7 Professional the first desktop environment that integrates all the diverse tasks within technical projects.
Welcoming the new release, Paul Bragg, Managing Director of Adept Scientific, commented: "Mathcad 7 Professional implements a whole host of new features that users have asked for, such as SI units, style sheets and functional programming with live symbolic operators. These enhancements are going to please a lot of Mathcad users in the UK.
"Power users will really appreciate the extra programming capabilities" he added, "and every Mathcad user will benefit from having more control over the formatting and output quality of their Mathcad documents, the wide range of built-in reference material and the enhanced usability of Mathcad 7 Professional."
"I am very impressed with Mathcad 7's new features," said Gary Turner, design engineer at Lucent Technologies Microelectronics Group. "Mathcad has always been extremely powerful, but now, with its new Web-based features, built-in resources, updated user interface and new maths editing features, Mathcad adds significantly to users' efficiency and productivity."
Mathcad is an easy-to-use and powerful PC-based calculation tool for solving problems from simple arithmetic to the most advanced symbolic algebra and differential equations. Its intuitive, live interface lets users easily formulate equations and quickly solve them using the everyday maths notation they're used to. Equations and graphs can be combined freely with text, and are updated instantly whenever the user changes a variable. As all formulae and workings are clearly displayed on the Mathcad worksheet, auditing and validation of calculations are easy, making Mathcad an excellent corporate standard.
Mathcad 7 Professional for Windows NT and Windows 95 is supplied and supported in the UK by Adept Scientific plc, 6 Business Centre West, Avenue One, Letchworth, Herts. SG6 2HB; telephone (01462) 480055, fax (01462) 480213, email
mathcad@adeptscience.co.uk.
Mathcad PLUS 6.0 remains available for Windows 3.1x and Macintosh users.
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BACKGROUND INFORMATION: What's New in Mathcad 7 Professional?
Mathcad 7 Professional offers users a variety of new benefits that further enhance productivity and collaboration, including:
Powerful Integration: Mathcad 7 Professional can function as a standard environment from which users can launch and control all the pieces of their technical projects. It works seamlessly with all Microsoft Office components and other popular desktop applications that support in-place editing, enabling Mathcad users to embed a worksheet in Word, for example, and use its full array of page layout and publishing features. Mathcad 7 Professional supports a wide variety of data sources. It accepts input from more than twenty data file types, including popular spreadsheet, database and calculation products, and can incorporate existing calculations and solutions into current projects, leveraging the organisation's accumulated experience.
In addition, Mathcad 7 Professional delivers new MathConnex technology, which manages the flow of computations and data between Mathcad and other files or applications, so users can visually integrate Mathcad with operations performed in other applications.
Improved Usability: An enhanced user interface, faster processing and seamless integration of calculation and text-based entries reinforce Mathcad's market leading position. Equation entry and editing are now more intuitive, and Mathcad 7 Professional automatically recognises whether the user is entering maths or text. The new release also provides significantly enhanced document formatting using style templates; intelligent graphing and plotting capabilities with the new QuickPlot data visualisation tool; and a print preview facility.
A Built-In Electronic Resource Centre: The new Mathcad Resource Centre contains over 3000 pages of easily accessible, ready-to-use reference material. Hundreds of standard formulae and physical constants are included, which can simply be dropped into the worksheet. There is a two-part Mathcad Treasury guide to problem-solving and programming methods, a practical guide to using statistics, over 300 QuickSheets to guide users through common tasks, an updated interactive tutorial and extensive on-line help.
Better Collaboration: Built-in Web browsing capabilities with the embedded Microsoft Internet Explorer and information sharing via the new MathSoft Collaboratory (a free Internet forum for the worldwide Mathcad community) combine to give users advanced, Web-based group work and distance learning capabilities. These new features unlock Mathcad 7's potential as a departmental or corporate standard and help companies address a number of crucial issues like standards compliance and project management. With Mathcad 7, teams can explore problems, formulate ideas, analyse data, test scenarios and select the best solution together. When used as a common workgroup environment, Mathcad also unifies workflow processes and enables detailed documentation of results. This collaborative approach improves individual and overall productivity but also facilitates and simplifies compliance with rigorous standards, both internal and external, including ISO 9000.
A Powerful, Open Solution: A number of new features add to the power and extensibility of Mathcad 7 Professional and serve to simplify many of the complex calculations performed in Mathcad. These include OLE 2 client and server support, including in-place activation and inter-application drag-and-drop capabilities, and OLE automation, using VBScript or JavaScript to script external computational objects that can be dropped into a Mathcad document as full participants in a worksheet's calculation flow.
European users especially will welcome Mathcad 7 Professional's full support of SI units. Matrix manipulation speed has been greatly increased, and many extra programming tools have been added, such as string variables, conditional branching, runtime error handling and programming with symbolic expressions, to help users to develop their own functional programs within Mathcad.
System requirements for Mathcad 7 Professional:
An 80486 (66 MHz or faster) or Pentium-based IBM or compatible computer. A maths co-processor is recommended but not required. CD-ROM drive. At least 12 megabytes of memory; 16 megabytes or more recommended. At least 55 megabytes of disk space for the typical (default) installation. At least 18 megabytes of disk space is required for a minimal installation. Web Link, Web browsing, and Collaboratory features require a direct Internet connection or Internet access through a service provider (America Online currently not supported.) Web browsing in Mathcad requires Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.02 or higher, which is included free of charge with Mathcad 7 Professional. The Excel component in Mathcad and MathConnex requires Excel for Windows 95 or higher. The MATLAB component requires MATLAB Professional v.4.2c. The Axum component requires Axum 5 (dated 5/18/97) or higher.
Mathcad 7 Professional requires Windows 95 or Windows NT 3.51 or higher. Mathcad PLUS 6.0 continues to be supplied and supported for users of Windows 3.1 and Macintosh systems. |
