Mathcad and Knovel Math

At PTC/User last week, Knovel released Knovel Math.  Here in Mathcad Product Management, we’re pretty excited about this.  We’ve provided solid, useful engineering reference content in Mathcad for a long time now.  However, as versions of the product increased, the engineering reference content remained static.  We’ve heard requests from customers that they’d like to see the content we provide to be updated, and to be available in multiple unit systems.  Further, we’ve had requests to offer other kinds of engineering content.

The Knovel Math solution meets those requests.  Knovel is mostly finished with digitizing the Roark’s and Hick’s content for use in Knovel’s extensive searchable database.  The Roark’s and Hick’s text will be purely digital, including reference tables.  Most to all of the examples that appear in the text will be available as live Mathcad worksheets.  In addition, these Mathcad examples will be available in both US Customary units, as well as the Metric unit system.

Knovel already has hundreds of titles that are digital and searchable for all kinds of engineering reference and use.  Moving forward, Knovel will be selecting titles that are suitable for “Mathcad enabling”.

• To learn more about Knovel Math, click here.  To watch a short video that explains it better than I can type, click here.

Needless to say, we’re excited over here in Mathcad Product Management land.  We’re helping to address customer requests, and we’re partnering with a company that is the gold standard for engineering reference materials.

“I talked to John…”

I wrapped up my PTC/User 2009 experience yesterday.  I had a day of technical committee meetings, which is the icing on the cake for this event.  Yes, it’s a long couple of days, and my feet hurt afterward, but it really is great because you get to network and see cool stuff and talk to customers and all kinds of great things.

One of my favorite experiences is encapsulated in the title to this post.  I was speaking with a customer at the Mathcad booth.  We were talking about how he and his company use Mathcad, what they’d like to see in it, and so on.  He asked me a deeper technical question, and I didn’t have the answer readily available.  So, I took a card of his, and said that I’d get him in contact with someone who would know the answer.  I promised that I’d do it that night – I was going to log in and send a message back to someone in Needham.  After we spoke, I walked him over to some of our technical support people who were at User, and introduced them to one another.  After a brief description of the problem, I returned to my booth.  I saw some follow-up e-mail messages in my inbox from the technical support person, reaching out to a broader group, even before I could send my message!

The next day, I saw this same customer on the tradeshow floor.  He comes up to me and says, “I talked to John… ” and continues to tell me that he is getting more information on his issue.  I’m not sure if he got it fully resolved, but I remember closing out the discussion thinking, “This is what it’s all about at User…  People connecting with one another to help each other out.”  I’d like to think that this customer felt like he got his money’s worth by being able to connect with product management, technical support, and other technical experts (not to mention attending the technical committees and having a say in how the product is shaped).

All in all, it was a great event.

Update: I just unearthed from some e-mail and web surfing (work-related, of course) and came across this blog post.  This is the customer I was talking about.  So, above when I write, “I’d like to think that this customer felt like he got his money’s worth by being able to connect with product management, technical support, and other technical experts”,  I guess I was right!

Tradeshow Shoes

I’m having a grand time at PTC/User this year in Orlando.  I’m hearing some interesting use cases of Mathcad, which is really great.  However, much of my time is spent standing, though, and my feet are killin’ me.  It made me think of a great opportunity here…  Why not design and create a “trade show” shoe?

• We’d need some good designers…  We have them readily on-hand at PTC/User.
• We’d need some sophisticated design tools to create and model the shoe…. We have Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 4.0 and Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 here.
• We’d need to collaborate with many users, because this wouldn’t be a solo design…  We have access to Windchill PDMLink or Windchill ProductPoint.
• We’d need to make sure the design that was conceptualized makes sense, from a “numbers perspective”…  We have Mathcad to check some of the design assumptions.
• We’d need to model it for many kinds of users…  We have access to the Manikin extension for Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire.
• We’d maybe want to create a prototype to actually see what it would look like in three dimensions… We have ready access to a few rapid prototyping companies (like ZCorp, as one example) and tools here at PTC/User.

I think this would be a great chance to see many of PTC’s products working together, flying in tight formation.  We have ready access to the people and the tools, and here’s a (loose) idea.

If PTC/User is looking for an idea for next year, maybe they could consider this.  Or maybe not. 

The Right Tool for the Job

"This might take me a while..."

I was sitting on my flight to come down to PTC/User 2009, when the gentleman next to me struck up a conversation.  “Do you work with PTC?”, he asked.  He, too, was attending PTC/User – he is a customer.  Most of his experience revolved around Pro/ENGINEER and Windchill, and had only a cursory knowledge of Mathcad.

He asked me, “So how does Mathcad differ from other math applications, like MATLAB or Mathematica?”  So, I replied that Mathcad’s hallmarks are its intelligent units management system, its whiteboard interface, and that it manages three kinds of content simultaneously: mathematics, images, and text.  So, an engineer’s true intent can be captured all in one application.

He pushed a bit more, and asked how Mathcad compares to the other two software applications he mentioned.  I indicated honestly that each tool has its own sweet spot.  On a broad basis, sure – Mathcad is a competitive product with the other tools mentioned, plus more.  But I wasn’t about to engage him in a conversation where it pitted Mathcad against other tools.  Instead, I highlighted where I think Mathcad is the best choice.  I returned to the example of units management, and how Mathcad lets an engineer do the things they are paid to do: engineering.  They needn’t worry about carrying units forward in expressions and calculations, making sure they cross-cancel out and resolve to a more common unit type (for example, a kilogram-meter-per-second-squared is a Newton).  I also highlighted how the Mathcad interface is excellent for assisting an engineer or other higher-order math user in documenting her calculations so that anyone else with whom she shares her worksheet can follow along.  Done correctly, there’s no mystery about data locked inside cells or decoding a complex script.  It lets a user document what they did, why they did it, and what they were thinking, right along with the calculations.

Just then, the woman next the gentleman I was talking to (row 9 on JetBlue, Sunday, 9:35a flight!) asked which application we were talking about.  I indicated that I am a Product Manager for Mathcad, and we were talking about Mathcad as it relates to other engineering mathematics tools.  She said, “Yes – I know exactly what you mean about the documentation aspect!”  She is a Program Manager for an aerospace company, and she is familiar with many of the tools we were discussing.  She said, “I work with engineers who think in matrices.  So, when we review each others’ work, I have to say to them ‘OK – this is good, but you need to explain it in a form that others can understand!’”

I thought this was a great way to explain one of the key value propositions of Mathcad, and I couldn’t have said it better myself.  There are many software applications on the market that perform similar tasks, as well as applications that perform tasks that no others do (or do well).  Mathcad is each of those.  Similarly, we’d all be lying if we said that price isn’t a factor in just about every purchase we make, whether it’s a personal purchase (like a car or a TV), or something related to business (like a consulting contract, or a piece of software).  When it comes down to it, you need the right tool for the job (and sized and priced appropriately).

We continued to talk a bit more about how Mathcad fits into the entire PTC Product Development System, and then trade industry stories about our individual lines of work.  As I was walking off the plane, I was thinking, “This is great – here’s someone who, unprompted, totally gets one of the greatest features of my product!”  It’s refreshing when people “get it”.  Of course, I would have also liked to hear what she thinks could be improved.  Sure, a more challenging conversation, but one that is just as interesting.  Getting user feedback is what helps make good products great, and great products the best.

Now, if I could only get my wife to be as interested in my work as my fellow passengers on my JetBlue flight, that’d be great. 

All Systems are Go

I’m wrapping up my presentation material and demonstration material for PTC User next week.  It’s going to be a great time.  I’m not a big fan of the presentations, though.  Don’t get me wrong – speaking about what’s new in our products is always great!  What I mean is this: comparatively speaking, I get more value (and more fun) out of interacting with current and would-be customers about what they like about Mathcad, what they don’t like, how something could be better, and the like.  And what I really like is when two customers start talking to each other about the ways they use Mathcad, and showing each other tips and tricks and the like.

If you haven’t done so yet, take a look at the agenda for this year’s PTC User event.  You can get the schedule here.  In the upper left corner of the screen, you can download it in a few ways.  I found that downloading the Excel version, and then using a filter on the ‘E’ column lets me see events by track.  You’ll notice that Mark A. Walker, Director of Product Management for Mathcad, is presenting the roadmap on Wednesday, June 10, at 9:30a.  That will be an interesting presentation, so if you use Mathcad, be sure to not miss it!

I’m presenting that same day at 10:25a to show how Mathcad can be used inside the entire product development system.  I’ll be showcasing the integration between Mathcad and Windchill.  I’ll touch briefly upon the Mathcad integration with Pro/ENGINEER, but more so to show how Pro/ENGINEER can use a Mathcad worksheet as an analysis feature that’s stored – and lifecycle-managed – inside Windchill.

And when we’re not presenting, Mark and I will be on the exhibit hall floor, at the Mathcad booth.  Be sure to stop by and say hello.  Also, be sure to stop over at Knovel’s booth, as they have some exciting content relating to Mathcad.

E to the x, dy/dx

Hello, all!  If you’re reading this, thanks!  This is our first blog post as part of the Mathcad Product Management team (and maybe others from within the Mathcad organization, as time goes on).  We appreciate you taking a few minutes to read this.

The title of this post serves a dual purpose.  First, if you use Mathcad or at all know any calculus or advanced math, those terms are certainly not foreign to you.  Instead of a traditional ‘Hello world!’ post, I thought I’d kick this off with something more math-related.  Secondly, this happens to be the first two lines of my undergraduate alma mater’s fight song (click here to read it; click here to watch an alum sing it!).  Since I learned this song within days of arriving on campus many years ago, it reminds me of a beginning, so to speak, much like this.

We’ve been toiling away over here at PTC, working diligently on the next major release of Mathcad.  We’re cognizant of the market requests and other current offerings, so we know we’ve got a challenge in front of us.  The progress we’ve made so far is great, though.  We’re excited to see the product move in the direction it has, and hope that the market and customers think the same!

In the spirit of keeping this opening post short and digestible, I’ll close with a few items.

• PTC User, an annual event that is organized, hosted, and run by PTCUser.org (“The independent voice of PTC Customers Worldwide”), starts next week (June 7 through June 10, 2009 – Orlando, Florida, USA).  At PTC User, all of PTC’s products will be showcased, complete with product update briefings, demonstrations, Ask The Experts panel, and the like.  Stop by the Mathcad booth and say hello if you are there.  If not, you can follow some of the action on PTC.com and via the Twitter hashtag #PTCUser09 (note that you don’t have to have a Twitter ID to follow the tweets – just click the link and you can read about the activity).
• If you’re a long-time Mathcad customer, please drop a note in the comments section below about your thoughts on the upcoming release, what you’d like to see, what’s great about Mathcad, or what’s not so great (be constructive, please!).  We’d like to know the feedback.
• If you’re new to Mathcad (or even if you’re a long-time customer, like above), consider adding this page to your RSS reader (there’s a link on the right, or – if you’re using a supported browser, you can click in the orange RSS feed icon in the address bar).  New to RSS?  Click here, watch, and wonder what you did without it.

Thanks for reading.  I hope to read your comments soon!

-Alan Belniak
Mathcad Product Manager