Engineering with Mathcad: Using Mathcad to Create and Organize your Engineering Calculations [Paperback]

Brent Maxfield (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0750667028 | ISBN-13: 978-0750667029 | Publication Date: December 2, 2006

Using the author's considerable experience of applying Mathcad to engineering problems, Engineering with Mathcad identifies the most powerful functions and features of the software and teaches how to apply these to create comprehensive engineering calculations. Many examples from a variety of engineering fields demonstrate the power and utility of Mathcad's tools, while also demonstrating how other software, such as Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, can be incorporated effectively. This simple, step-by-step approach makes this book an ideal Mathcad text for professional engineers as well as engineering and science students.

A CD-ROM packaged with the book contains all the examples in the text and an evaluation version of the Mathcad software, enabling the reader to learn by doing and experiment by changing parameters.

* Identifies the key Mathcad functions for creating comprehensive engineering calculations
* A step-by-step approach enables easy learning for professional engineers and students alike
* Includes a CD-ROM containing all the examples in the text and an evaluation version of the Mathcad software

Editorial Reviews

Book Description

A must-have resource demonstrating the power of Mathcad to create calculations for solving complex engineering problems

Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Butterworth-Heinemann (December 2, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0750667028
• ISBN-13: 978-0750667029
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #392,232 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars elementary, May 24, 2007

By 

milou "milou" (saratoga springs, ny) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Engineering with Mathcad: Using Mathcad to Create and Organize your Engineering Calculations (Paperback)

This book provides the reader with access to many of the basic functions of mathcad. The author does this carefully and in some detail. But the book does not go far enough. There is nothing about differential equation solvers, nothing about random numbers, nothing about reading or writing data to or from a file and in fact nothing about engineering. What it is is a nice introduction to mathcad.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Engineering with Mathcad - An Excellent Resournce for New and Experienced Mathcad Users, January 18, 2007

By 

Jeff Lindsay "Lead author of Conquering Innov... (Appleton, Wisconsin) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Engineering with Mathcad: Using Mathcad to Create and Organize your Engineering Calculations (Paperback)

Brent Maxfield's Engineering with Mathcad is a valuable contribution to the engineering community that may do much to help those in engineering and the sciences in general jumpstart their efforts to learn and apply Mathcad, or to help long-time users strengthen their skills. The book is accessible, engaging, and written from the perspective of one who has dealt the practical aspects of Mathcad for many years. It comes with a useful CD having a handbook and all the examples in the text, allowing the users to easily follow along and work with the material being discussed. The CD also can be used to install Mathcad 13 for PC or Mac with a 120-day academic license.

The book covers a broad scope of material effectively, and should provide useful new insights even for power users. However, the book is not intended to provide a comprehensive guide to the functions and plotting features of Mathcad. For example, there is no significant discussion of solving differential equations. Indeed, many of the engineering applications covered are relatively basic, with the emphasis being more on how to use Mathcad effectively rather than how to tackle complex engineering problems. Given the burgeoning scope of Mathcad's tool and the many powerful features it has that experienced users may have been missing, Maxfield's approach represents a reasonable editorial decision to cover Mathcad broadly rather than to teach engineering mathematics or dive into the complexities of any of the numerous areas of interest in engineering.

The book may be especially valuable for those who are relatively new at Mathcad or who, like myself, have Mathcad experience but may not have used it for some time and need a refresher. But a carefully selected swathe of sophisticated aspects of Mathcad are treated that may be helpful to longtime Mathcad users who simply had no idea about some of the tools and capabilities they were overlooking.

With his years of Mathcad experience, Maxfield offers many tips, sometimes subtle, to guide users in creating worksheets, preventing errors, maintaining readability, selecting useful variable names, and so forth.

In general, I recommend Maxfield's book as an easy-to-read, well organized guide to help a wide range of Mathcad users learn techniques useful for engineering and many other fields as well.

I congratulate the author for an excellent book that I think will be helpful to numerous Mathcad users.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fantastic Book, December 30, 2006

By 

Dr. K. YU "QS" (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Engineering with Mathcad: Using Mathcad to Create and Organize your Engineering Calculations (Paperback)

I'd like to give this book 5 stars. Brent Maxfield, a well-respected practicing engineer who has used Mathcad for many years, wrote this unique book by focusing on the functions and features most relevant to engineering practice. The book provides a comprehensive account of the important topics in four progressive parts, starting from step-by-step demonstration of basic Mathcad features to the creation of most comprehensive calculations, even integrating with calculations from other software programs such as Microsoft Excel. I believe even advanced Mathcad users could benefit from the fantastic coverage on how to better organize engineering calculations and learn how to embed other programs into Mathcad and assemble calculations from multiple Mathcad files.

This book explains every topic with abundant examples and illustrations. Therefore, the book is very easy to follow, especially when I repeat the examples in the computer at the same time.

I also like numerous insightful tips embedded throughout the book. I wish I had known some of them years ago. This well-thought-out book certainly fills an important need and serves as a useful guide for engineering students, engineering researchers, and the practicing professionals who want to use Mathcad efficiently to solve their problems.