Engineering with MathCAD

Course Description

Math is everywhere and in everything. From bridges to high-rises, from roller-coasters to the space shuttle, math is critical to today's high-tech society. MathCAD by MathSoft (now a part of PTC) makes math easy and approachable for users from high school students to engineers who are at the cutting edge of some of the most important and demanding technical environments in the world. In this lesson, you will learn the basic features of MathCAD 15 or earlier versions and three MathCAD applications in the real world of structural engineering. If you are interested in learning about features and functions of the latest release (MathCAD Prime), you may choose PDHonline Course G388.

This course includes a multiple choice quiz at the end.

Learning Objective

At the conclusion of this course, the student will:

• Recognize the value of MathCAD to professional engineers;
• Be familiar with the interface, graphics, text and computational features of MathCAD; and
• Be able to perform engineering calculations using MathCAD.

Course Introduction

First introduced in 1986, MathCAD is a valuable technical computing tool for engineers and architects. You can think of MathCAD as a combination of

•  a powerful technical computing environment centered on real math notation, and
•  a flexible, full-featured technical word processor.

MathCAD provides a rich problem-solving environment that gives you a wide variety of analysis and visualization tools. Unlike other technical software, MathCAD does math the same way you do. That is because it looks and works like a scratchpad and pencil. MathCAD's on-screen interface is a blank worksheet on which you can enter equations, graph data or functions, and annotate with text - anywhere on the worksheet. Some of the important computational features of MathCAD for engineering applications are:

•  Built-in units of measurement and dimension checking.
•  Built-in solver for simultaneous equations and inequalities.
•  Summations, products and iteration.
•  Trigonometric, hyperbolic, exponential and Bessel functions.
•  Fast Fourier transformation, both one and two dimensional.
•  User-defined functions.
•  Vectors and matrices, including operation for matrix multiplication, matrix inverse, tranpose, determinant, dot and cross product.

Mathematical expressions in MathCAD look the way you would see them in a textbook or a reference book. The only difference is that MathCAD's equations and graphs are live, which means MathCAD recalculates the math and redraws the graphs every time you change any data, variable, or equation in a worksheet. This feature in MathCAD is called "Live Document Interface".

In addition to the Live Document Interface, another important feature that sets MathCAD apart from other technical computing tools is its built-in support for units. MathCAD can handle unit conversion automatically within a worksheet.

Therefore, the technical documents prepared using MathCAD can be easily understood and verified by others. In addition, using MathCAD in your work can relieve you from tedious and repetitive design calculations, eliminate arithmetic errors, and produce quality design calculations.

Course Content

To learn the basic features of MathCAD, you need to have a copy of MathCAD 15 or earlier versions released before 2010. If you do not have one, you may purchase a copy on the Internet. Once you install the software, you need to study the following documents:

MathCAD - Wikipedia (HTML)
MathCAD's built-in tutorial (a PDF file, 41 pages - this tutorial is based on MathCAD 2000).

By watching the following videos, you will learn the basic and advanced features of MathCAD and the application in the real-world of the engineering analysis.

1. MathCAD Intro (6:23 video)
2. MathCAD Symbolics (12:17 video)
3. MathCAD Finding Centroids (11:47 video)
4. MathCAD 2D Plots (10:38 video)
5. MathCAD 3D Plots (5:52 video)
6. MathCAD Solve Blocks (9:49 video)
7. Load Shear Moment Diagram with Mathcad (11:07 video)
8. Maximize and Minimize Using Mathcad (9:34 video)
9. Fun with Mathcad: An Appropriate Tool for Engineering Problem Solving (1:44:29 video)

In particular, you need to learn how to:

1. enter text
2. build mathematical expressions
3. define variables
4. define functions
5. define range variables
6. create graphs
7. specify units

MathCAD Web Library contains many examples of MathCAD applications in the various disciplines. In this lesson, you need to download and study the following two MathCAD application files since you will be asked to solve some simple beam problems when taking the quiz.

1. Elastic bending of beams with a rectangular cross section (bending.mcd -free download, MathCAD 2000i, 24 kb)
2. Shear and moment diagrams for any simply supported/overhanging beams (ssbeam.mcd-free download, MathCAD 7 Prof., 508 kb) by K. Hauck

MathCAD's flexible calculation and documentation environment is evolving as one of the most popular platforms for industry-specific solutions, which includes MathCAD Electronic Books, MathCAD Extension Packs, Dynamically Linked Libraries (DLL, i.e., user-created C++ libraries) and Interoperability with other application such as spreadsheet software.

Course Summary

This course covers some of the basic features of MathCAD, which include interface features, graphical features, computational features, and text and document features. Through this online course, the student should be able to use MathCAD to solve some of the routine design problems in his/her design practice. For more advanced topics on MathCAD applications, you may visit the PTC website.

Related Links

For additional technical information related to this subject, please visit the following websites or web pages:

PTC - MathCAD

Quiz

Once you finish studying the above MathCAD document and application files, you need to take a quiz to obtain the PDH credits.

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DISCLAIMER: The materials contained in the online course are not intended as a representation or warranty on the part of PDHonline.org or any other person/organization named herein. The materials are for general information only. They are not a substitute for competent professional advice. Application of this information to a specific project should be reviewed by a registered professional engineer. Anyone making use of the information set forth herein does so at their own risk and assumes any and all resulting liability arising therefrom.

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