Mathcad

Mathcad is a commercial computer algebra system, originally developed by Mathsoft which was acquired by Parametric Technology Corporation ( PTC) in 2004, which exists currently at version 15.0. In parallel, there is a variant called "Prime". In the current version 3 Prime does not have the functionality of Mathcad 15 Mathcad 15 will not be further developed. It was originally developed for purely numerical calculations (such as the use of approximation methods ). Accordingly, in this range, the difference of Mathcad into similar Mathematica, Maple and Scilab. Intern uses Mathcad since version 3 (1991) a minimal variant of the symbol processor of Maple.

Mathcad is less powerful than Maple with symbolic calculations and Mathematica, but is very popular for its numerical computation capabilities and the possibility of adding expansion packs on various topics for technicians, economists, natural scientists. Even in schools the program finds frequent use, since it represents a good compromise between ease of use and mathematical skills.

Mathcad provides all calculations on worksheets dar. calculations are entered by the user in standard mathematical notation. This concept has the advantage that calculations and graphs can be easily printed. Furthermore, the concept approximates to the normal work of technicians and scientists. However, the memory requirement is greater than about at a notation of calculations in a programming language, as need be, additional information, such as the positions of the elements on the page is stored. Furthermore, often leading storage management program crashes.

The program is aimed primarily at users without programming skills, but also provides opportunities for procedural programming. In C , or C written code can be integrated with custom DLLs.