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From Mathcad to Wolfram Language?

I am having trouble staying in one screen while working in Wolfram. Generally I prepare a CAS document (called workbooks) in Mathcad with a rough draft, formulas, variable definitions, code and a graph. Then of course we want to pretty the thing up like it all appears on the page of a Calculus book.. Colorful, little text regions, moving things around and resizing. In Mathcad this is so simple and much like photo shop and image cropping and PowerPoint slides. It is mostly just point, drag, clip, fill, stretch and what not. You do have to be careful of hierarchy and order. You can actual drag a small definition just a little to far up in a worksheet and get a syntax error because it will not be calculated in the order of left to right and down. In Wolfram I see the cell formats and text formats . . .****all the way across the screen**** with apparently no way to drag a graph or picture into this block of only code. Everything in wolfram seems to just propagates another line of code that keeps going down and to the left margin. This leaves a lot of blank document / screen space to the upper right. ESPECIALLY when working with graphs. There are many cool options available and I find it somewhat easy to learn (so far) but with every click of the mouse at each option chosen ANOTHER graph appears . . .in another line . . .again down to the left. By the time I get to he graph that I want I have to go back and erase about fifteen others up the page . . .again trying to make use of the whole screen. Why can I not make changes, choose options, and keep operating in the same graph? .

POSTED BY: Roger Wells
4 Replies
POSTED BY: Ian Williams

Thanks to all. Ian it sounds like clicking immediately after a line of code and Alt7 turns everything into Text. I am learning a few tricks but there is no question this software is not for those who like to point click and drag. Tried to post my first worksheet here.

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POSTED BY: Roger Wells

Please post an example notebook so we can see what you are doing to try to improve your workflow. Something must be wrong because I do not have those issues.

Just guessing from your description- when you add external pictures, it is best to click on the cell and change the cell to not be evaluatable. This will stop MMA from making a copy when the notebook evaluates. Click the cell bar on the right to select it and go to the cell properties menu or Cmd-option-E on a Mac.

Regards

POSTED BY: Neil Singer

thankyou . . . . .I will investigate this.

POSTED BY: Roger Wells
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