What's new in PTC Mathcad Prime 8

PTC has recently released a new Mathcad version – Prime 8. So let’s take a look at the improvements.

1. Redefinition Warnings

With the redefinition warnings functionality in Mathcad Prime 8, warnings automatically appear on redefinitions in regions that contain them. You can turn warnings on and off for all or individual categories of identifiers, so you can more closely manage your identifier use.

2. Show Frame (header, footer, page body)

Turn borders on for the header, footer, and page body calculation area of your worksheet. These borders appear in page view, printed documents, and worksheets saved in PDF format.

3. Partial Derivative Operator

Insert and use a partial derivative operator in your worksheet. From the Operators menu, use the new operator to write expressions in terms of partial derivatives.

4. Copy/paste multiple values to combo-box

Mathcad Prime 7 included a combo-box input control to control calculations in your worksheets with easy-to-create, easy-to-use drop-down menus of variable definitions.

Mathcad Prime 8 adds the ability to paste multiple variable values directly into the combo-box edit mode. Copy a selection of values from a matrix or a table, select that same size of data in a combo box, and paste. Or you can paste it into one value box, and the data will paste from that location down to the right. In both cases, the combo box automatically resizes to accommodate the pasted data.

5. Symbolics Engine Enhancements

PTC Mathcad Prime 8 continues to enhance the functionality of the new symbolics engine, which was introduced in PTC Mathcad Prime 6. In PTC Mathcad Prime 8 you’ll find:

Symbolics integral transform enhancements.  Significant improvement and expansion in use and performance, including added supported use cases, have been added for the following symbolic integral transforms: 
– fourier and invfourier 
– laplace and invlaplace
– ztrans and invztrans 
New nfact and ofact modifiers for use with fourier keyword, which allows you to define normalization and oscillatory factors.

Improved performance and added supported use cases for calculus operators, including limits, derivative, and integrals.
Improved performance and added supported use cases for keywords, including solve, rewrite, series, simplify, assume.
Improvement in undefined variable handling in symbolic results, including better auto-labelling of free undefined variables and variables in lambda expressions.

6. Numeric Engine Enhancements

In PTC Mathcad Prime 8, the following numeric engine updates and enhancements have been made.

Updated physical constants. In alignment with NIST and CODATA, we’ve updated several physical constants, including the following:

Planck’s constant 
Boltzmann constant 
Reduced Planks constant  Atomic mass unit  Avogadros number 
Molar gas constant 
Fine structure constant 
Elementary charge 
Stefan–Boltzmann constant 
Magnetic flux quantum 
Rydberg constant

Clearer error messages related to behavior of functions statespace and odesolve when not properly configured.

7. Usability Enhancements

The following usability enhancements have been made:

Ctrl/Wheel zoom can now be used to zoom in and out of a worksheet.
Zoom slider now defaults to 5 % steps when you use the + and – controls. 
With the Close button on worksheet tabs, you can now close worksheets directly from the worksheet tab.

Unsaved worksheet indicator: for worksheets that have yet to be saved, an asterisk will appear on the worksheet tab.

Context menu on worksheet tabs: A new context menu is now available on all worksheet tabs providing access to useful actions, including:

Calculate 
Close (this worksheet, all worksheets, other worksheets, worksheets to the left/right, unchanged worksheets) 
Move tab 
Copy full file path 
Open containing folder 
Print
Save as

Drag and move worksheet tab: When multiple worksheets are open, a selected worksheet tab can now be dragged and dropped to arrange the order of worksheet tabs to the user’s preference. 
Clear text format command:  You can now clear text formatting (font, font size, color, etc.) for text selections back to the default text format.

8. Miscellaneous

Finally, you’ll find these updates available, so your work remains useful moving into the future.

Save legacy worksheets as HTML

PTC Mathcad Prime 8.0 worksheet converter allows you to save legacy Mathcad 15 worksheets in HTML format. With the standalone converter introduced in PTC Mathcad Prime 7.0, you no longer need a legacy Mathcad install to convert legacy Mathcad 15 worksheets to Mathcad Prime format. With the Save As HTML functionality in PTC Mathcad Prime 8.0 XMCD MCD converter, you can now create a view of the legacy Mathcad 15 worksheet, so you no longer need a legacy Mathcad install to see the content that you are converting. Use the Save as HTML functionality in the converter to create a view of your legacy Mathcad 15 worksheet before you convert it to Prime format and refer to it to validate your new Prime worksheet and help with rework where necessary.

Windows 11 support

PTC Mathcad Prime 8.0 is certified to run on the newest Windows operating system, Windows 11 (version 21H2).

What’s new in PTC Mathcad Prime 8