The Foreword for the Second edition of the book «Mathcad 7 Pro for Students and Engineers»

This is a two-way book. On the one hand, this is a revised, remade, and largely supplemented edition of my first Mathcad book (see Foreword to it). On the other hand, this book may be treated as a new edition describing the most up-to-date Mathcad software, Mathcad 7 Pro by MathSoft, Inc. In any case I hope, that this book, just like the previous one, will be accepted by my readers.

There are seven comments.

1. I did my best to correct errors and misprints found in the first edition of the book. I wish to acknowledge the help of known and unknown colleagues.

2. I participated in testing the beta-version of Mathcad Pro 7.0 (as an official beta-tester). This participation provided me with better knowledge of MathSoft, Inc. and gave me a chance to «play» in detail with the new stuff introduced in Mathcad 7 Pro.

3. Attention is also given to the previous version ¾ Mathcad PLUS 6.0, because Mathcad Pro 7.0 requires up-to-date PC stuff (Windows 95 or Windows NT, 16 MB RAM etc.). The book has been written for students and engineers; many of whom have no access even to Windows 3.x. There is also a DOS-version of Mathcad, which requires a personal computer with no hard drive and 1 MB RAM. Almost all exercises included in the book (excluding studies 6 and 7) also work with the DOS-version of Mathcad.

4. I have been actively engaged in the establishing of a «world resolution» concept with Mathcad.

5. This edition is the manual. Therefore, some difficulties encountered by the students studying Mathcad with the previous edition were eliminated during the revision process.

6. In parallel with the writing of this book I have prepared the CD-ROM including a training multimedia course on Mathcad at Multimedia Technology Co. (8/2 Energeticheskaya, Moscow, 111116, Russia; tel. 095-362-7486; e-mail mmt@glas.apc.org). I hope that the book and the CD-ROM will be released at the same time and supplement each other.

7. All comments and wishes regarding the book will be acknowledged by surface mail (V. Ochkov, TWT Department, Moscow Power Institute, 14 Krasnokazarmennaya, Moscow, 111250, Russia) or e-mail (ochkov@twt.mpei.ac.ru).

November 1997