Overview of Mathcad Topics

Below is a summary of Mathcad topics that are covered in individual lessons. The lessons are designed to be a hands-on experience with a cycle of: instructor describes technique, instructor demonstrates the technique, and students practice with an example problem. The worksheets are available in Mathcad 15 as well as in PDF form. The worksheets are available with student copies that are partially filled out as well as the solution to the exercises.

• Mathcad Basics
• Symbolic Manipulations
  • Symbolic Toolbar honors all previous calculations AND recalculates automatically.
  • Symbolic Pull-down Menu ignores previous definitions & performs the operation once.
• Units in Mathcad
  • Insert Unit (Measuring Cup) to see all possible Mathcad Units and notation
  • Temperature units as K or R
• Functions
  • User-defined functions and Intrinsic functions
  • Units must be included correctly to ensure functions are evaluated properly (temperature).
  • if function and boolean operators
• Vectors and Matrices
  • Methods to create matrices and vectors: Insert Matrix Toolbar, Import, Copy/Paste, Range Variables.
  • Index or Matrix (Bracket [ ) notation
  • Linear Algebra (solving systems of linear equations) with X = A-1 * B and lsolve(A,B)
  • Matrix Multiplication, Inverse, Transpose, Determinant
  • Using matrices to define correlations for many compounds with one function.
• Graphing
  • Plotting expressions, functions, matrices of data on the same plot.
  • Default range of [-10 10] for independent variable (x-axis), but can change range of both axes.
  • Use undefined variables or vector data for independent variable (x-axis)
  • Changing line properties, adding points, using log axis, using Trace function
• Calculus
  • First order, higher order, and mixed derivatives.
  • Single and multiple variable integration.
  • Symbolic evaluation:
    • Symbolic Toolbar
    • Symbolic/Evaluate/Symbolically
    • Symbolic/Variable/Differentiate
    • Symbolic/Variable/Integrate
• Solving Equations and Optimization
  • Polyroots
  • Tracing
  • root function
  • Solve Blocks
    • Reduce number of equations
    • Debugging Techniques/Common Errors
    • How to deal with units
    • Create functions (e.g. T-x-y diagrams)
    • Parametric solve blocks (repeating the calculation of a solve block many times)
• Data Analysis
  • Interpolation: linterp and cspline
  • Curve Fitting
    • line (slope and intercept)
    • regress
    • linfit
    • genfit
    • Selecting correct technique
  • Difference between and when to use interpolation vs. curve fitting

Exam Preparation

Review key concepts:

• MathCAD Review

How to prepare for the exam (use the strategy that works best for you):

1. Go over the summary of topics and rank areas that you are comfortable with and areas that you are less comfortable with.
2. Look over homework problems, try to redo problems that were missed. Go through the motions of completing the homework problems.
3. Look over the demo/demo solutions try to redo these demos. Do extra problems that we didn’t get to.
4. Do Extra Practice Problems

You only have so much time to study for the exam, plan out when and what you will study.