Sometimes you might find yourself the only PTC Mathcad Prime user at your workplace or on your team, or the only person working on your kinds of problems. You might feel alone. That you are the only person struggling with your problems, and there’s nowhere you can get help. The great news is, there’s an entire worldwide band of users available to provide you assistance at the PTC Community.
The PTC Mathcad Community is divided into three parts. (Or in the prose of Julius Caesar, “Civitas de PTC Mathcad Prime est omnis divisa in partes tres.”) Let’s take a look at what they have to offer.
The forum in the PTC Mathcad Community is where you’ll find people seeking help and answers to questions from other PTC Mathcad users from all over the world. You’ll quickly find that there are a lot of really brilliant mathematicians willing to help you.
Did you try writing a program or function or solve block and you’re getting an error message or weird result? Post it. Are you tackling some differential equations for the first time? Post it. Having trouble with units, plotting, or input / output? Post it.
If you’re having trouble, odds are that someone else has experienced the same problem before. If they haven’t, there are some seriously knowledgeable users who can probably point you in the right direction.
All the time I hear people say, “PTC Mathcad should be able to do this,” or “Creo Parametric should do things this way,” or “I want Windchill to…” It’s all well and good to communicate your ideas to others, but that’s not an effective way of getting your wants and desires implemented into the software. Over the years, I’ve gotten to know many product managers at PTC, and here’s one thing they share in common: they can’t read minds. I know they do their best to make the software as good as it can be, but they need your feedback and input to make the software better.
The most effective ways of getting your ideas implemented into the software are:
Don’t just submit your own ideas, but be sure to comment and, if you’re on maintenance, you can even vote on ideas that others have submitted.
As I’m writing this, Major League Baseball is in spring training.* There’s an article with a PTC Mathcad worksheet on calculating the trajectory of a baseball with air resistance. This is of great interest personally because my college buddy is the assistant general manager of the Mariners and I love baseball.
Also, a lifetime ago, I was on M1A1 Abrams tanks in the Army. We were trained that we could hit targets at 3000 meters at 30 miles per hour. I’ve always wanted to play around with PTC Mathcad to duplicate our firing computer’s algorithms that took into account vehicle velocity, range to target, temperature, humidity, wind speed, barrel wear, and a host of other factors. Now I’ve got a starting resource to do so.
You’ll find numerous other similar worksheets that you can download that can help you out with your projects and assignments.
You’re not alone. Don’t be an island. With a little exploring, you’ll find that, in the words of modern poet Gordon Sumner (a.k.a. Sting), you’re one of “a hundred billion castaways looking for a home.” The PTC Mathcad Community might be it.
Note. PTC’s community manager invites you to “subscribe” to a community forum or “label” to receive notifications for your favorite community content right in your inbox. Subscribing to the overall Community Announcements is also a great way to stay up to date on PTC Community News.
*The remainder of 2020 spring training games were canceled three days after this was written.
Dave Martin is a Creo, Windchill, and PTC Mathcad instructor and consultant. He is the author of the books “Top Down Design in Creo Parametric,” “Design Intent in Creo Parametric,” and “Configuring Creo Parametric,” all available at amazon.com. He can be reached at dmartin@creowindchill.com.
Dave currently works as the configuration manager for Elroy Air, which develops autonomous aerial vehicles for middle-mile delivery. Previous employers include Blue Origin, Amazon Prime Air, Amazon Lab126, and PTC. He holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and is a former armor officer in the United States Army Reserves.
