Maplesoft's engineering software tool gets upgraded

Maplesoft has released the latest edition of its Maple math and engineering software. The release of Maple 12 introduces a range of new tools built on the fundamental Maple technology platform of smart documents, powerful mathematics, and seamless connectivity to the engineering design tool chain.

A key new feature of this release is the direct connectivity between Maple 12 and popular CAD systems such as SolidWorks and Autodesk Inventor. CAD users are now able to deploy mathematical capabilities to extend the range of analysis on CAD models. Other connectivity features include Matlab code import and translation to enable the easy migration of legacy code to new Maple documents, and database connectivity to allow Maple 12 applications to access directly external datasets stored in popular SQL databases.

The product also offers new ways to develop sophisticated mathematical models faster and more accurately, Maple said. The Maple 12 release also features a new collection of Dynamic Systems modeling tools, control design, and signal processing, which adds frequency domain analysis, state space analysis, along with other benefits to the mathematical tool set.

The Dynamic Systems package offers a large selection of analytic and graphing tools for linear time-invariant systems, which are essential in control systems development, Maplesoft said. New wavelet support provides easy access to a suite of wavelet tools in any general-purpose computation package. Wavelet analysis is an important technique in key areas such as image compression and image and signal analysis, complementing classical techniques such as FFT, said Maplesoft.

Maple 12 also includes new plotting capabilities that simplify the creation of complex engineering plots. New types include dual-axis plots, polar plots, and specialized engineering plots such as frequency domain responses and root-locus plots. The new release also offers major enhancements to the differential equation and differential-algebraic equation (DAE) solvers and smart document technology.

The tool is also easier to use with improvements to customizable interactive components and clickable enhancements. Users now have more choices in buttons, controls, and other interface tools, and the code editor, for users who develop custom code, make Maple scripts and procedures easier to write.

Single user professional licenses of Maple 12 are available for $1,895.

- Gina Roos
eeProductCenter