PTC Mathcad - Using constants and Greek letters

[@JeromeDemers]

sweet, just starting to learn Mathcad. Other pro tip is that once you go in the ribbon menu "operators and symbols" and click symbols and the entire symbols menu drop down, you can mouse over the symbols and Mathcad shows you the Ctrl+G command for them! It actually does that for other Mathcad command.

[@PatJHeffernan]

Excellent. I use a lot of Ctrl-G commands. 👍🏻

[@DavidKonyndyk]

Ok, so how do you use a symbol like sigma in a function without mathcad treating it as a constant? I'm just trying to plot the gaussian distribution using the greek letter sigma, and mathcad turns it green and assumes it's the Boltzmann constant with units in W⋅m−2⋅K−4. How do I make the green turn to black?

[@PatJHeffernan]

@@DavidKonyndyk Try going up to the menus and, with the sigma selected, setting is back to “variable”.

[@DavidKonyndyk]

@@PatJHeffernan I'm trying that now, using the label styles as in your video "PTC Mathcad - Label Styles" It overrides me every time and keeps sigma as a constant. if I type 5σ=, it tells me 2.835x10^-7 kg/s^-3K-4. If I change σ to a variable and hit enter, the answer should be a question mark and a red circle should appear around σ telling me my variable has not been defined. Instead it goes back to green and assumes Boltzmann's constant. This is silly because there are multiple other common uses for the Greek letter σ. So why choose one in the software? And if it's to be a constant, then why is not not in the constants dropdown instead of symbols? There needs to be a global assignment options box for each worksheet where you specify these types of things for the entire sheet.

[@PatJHeffernan]

@@DavidKonyndyk I’m not sure what to say… I am able to manage sigmas label and shift it between constant and variable without issue (I just pulled out the computer to check).

[@PatJHeffernan]

@@DavidKonyndyk As for the constants drop down box, it only has the most common ones listed as there are too many constants to list there. Once a symbol is designated as a variable or constant, it should maintain its definition until changed within the worksheet. If you have suggestions for the UI, you should engage with PTC, I find them very approachable.

[@DavidKonyndyk]

@@PatJHeffernan Well thanks for checking, but I'm on Prime 9.0 and it definitely won't switch. Perhaps it's because I'm on the trial license or something.