best maths package

phlegmy

hey guys just wondering what's the best maths package around
i have a student edition of mathcad which is fine for what it does.
i have just gotten matlab with simulink which on first impression seems like i'd have to spend months and months before i'd be useful at it. i'm doing a control engineering based final year project and was interested in what i heard simulink could do for me
has anyone any experience with simulink.+how big a learning curve
OR
what packages do you use?

sstone

Right now, on my comupter, I have: Mathcad, Maple and Mathematica. For most things that I do, Mathcad is good enough.

SGT

For control engineering Matlab is excellent. Besides Simulink, there is a Control Toolbox available that allows you to model virtually anything you need.

Dansercoer

I was wondering whether Simulink could help me solve this?
I would prefer to stay with SolidWorks because I already use it for 3D modeling so I guess it will be easier to learn, but I don't think CosmosWorks could do that.
What do you recommend?

Thanks in advance!

herpamad

I found that MathCad had the smallest learning curve, it is so easy and obvious, and not really found many limits. It integrates with Excel and Matlab with ease, which helps remove all the limits that i have come upon.

MatLab took me ages to work out, about 4 weeks until i was up to speed with it so i could use it efficiently. Took me days for MathCad.

Maple has its good points, i prefer doing some calculations in Maple as i find it much easier, but its not as user friendly as MathCad when it comes to view back what you have done. Also Maple is not as friendly with placement of equations and the likes, and a few others things.

I have never used mathmatica, but lead think its great and i would like to get a copy some day to see how good it is, if they had a 30 day trial i would take a try at it.

MathCad has a 30 day trial, not sure about Maple and MatLab though.

Dr.D

I've worked with MatLab, Mathematica, and Maple, and I prefer Maple by far over the other two. I particularly like the powerful closed form solution capablility (Mathematica has this also) and an easier interface than Mathematica.

A whole lot of this comes down to personal preferences, I think.