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Table of Contents
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Events
Seminars
Design Calculations & Documentation with Mathcad 14
Seminars in Wellington (20 March) and Auckland (29 March) at 10:00am - 11:30am
By using Mathcad, organisations become more efficient through being able to re-use their calculation documents on different jobs, and by avoiding many common types of calculation error. This seminar will show you what many of the major NZ engineering companies have already know – an investment in Mathcad software and training will repay itself many times over.
to find out more and to register.
Data analysis and modelling with MATLAB 7.4 and Simulink 6.6
Seminars in Wellington (20 March) and Auckland (29 March) at 1:00pm - 2:15pm
Organisations as different as the Reserve Bank, Ministry of Fisheries and Tait Electronics know that MATLAB allows them to efficiently analyse and model data. Come to this seminar to see a demonstration of MATLAB as a tool for data analysis and modelling in several application areas, including electrical and biological systems.
to find out more and to register.
Maple documents for numeric and symbolic calculations
Seminars in Wellington (20 March) and Auckland (29 March) at 2:30pm - 3:45pm
Maple is widely used in New Zealand for educating engineers about symbolic mathematics. With the features already in version 10, and with more features in version 11 and planned for version 12, Maple has become a powerful tool for the use of engineers working on real problems. It has become a particularly powerful supplement to MATLAB.
The seminar will be an introduction to the program for those who don't know it, and it will demonstrate many of the new features found in version 10 and 11 so it will be of interest to existing users as well.
to find out more and to register.
Linking Maple with MATLAB & Simulink
Seminars in Wellington (20 March) and Auckland (29 March) at 4:00pm – 4:30pm
This seminar will assume that the audience has some familiarity with MATLAB, the leading engineering computation package. The audience should also either know Maple, or have been to the previous seminar that introduces Maple.
The seminar will extend the previous seminar on Maple to show the additional features that make Maple the ideal tool to extend the power of MATLAB to do symbolic mathematics calculations. In particular, Maple can simplify the creation of Simulink blocks, and can help you to understand the behaviour of existing complex Simulink models.
to find out more and to register.
Introduction to STATISTICA
Seminars in Wellington (21 March) and Auckland (30 March) at 9:00am – 10:30am
By using STATISTICA to analyse data you save much time compared to using Excel, and you have many more graphical and numerical methods available to increase the depth of your understanding. STATISTICA also surpasses the scope and ease of use of all other desktop statistics programs. This seminar will introduce STATISTICA’s main features, from the interaction with data sources through summarising of categorical and continuous data to the graphics that are part of all STATISTICA installations.
The emphasis will be on the ease of use enjoyed by all users, from total beginners who know only Excel, to advanced statisticians and data analysts.
to find out more and to register.
Using STATISTICA for Statistical Process Control
Seminars in Wellington (21 March) and Auckland (30 March) at 10:45am – 11:30am
Organisations that make things or deliver services need to analyse their processes to ensure that the amount of variability that occurs is as small as possible and is due to unavoidable random fluctuations, rather than a lack of control of their process. Many organisations around the world have proved that using SPC to do this saves them very large sums of money.
This seminar will build on the prior seminar that introduces STATISTICA, and describes how to use STATISTICA for various parts of the Statistical Process Control (SPC) process. The seminar will not assume detailed knowledge or experience of SPC, but will instead use demonstrations of the use of STATISTICA to present the principles of this discipline.
to find out more and to register.
Data mining with STATISTICA
Seminars in Wellington (21 March) and Auckland (30 March) at 1:00pm – 2:30pm
Data mining allows analysts to apply a variety of powerful machine-learning tools to the task of searching for relationships in small or large data sets, often finding non-linear or complex relationships that are not found by traditional methods.
This seminar will demonstrate a number of optional tools within STATISTICA that allow analysts to apply these methods as a part of their daily routine. If you analyse real-world data and don't know about using methods such as CHAID and Neural Networks, then you need to come and see them demonstrated.
to find out more and to register.
Webinars
Data Analysis - STATISTICA or Excel?
Webinar online on 27 March at 10:00am – 10:45am
Do you believe “I don’t need anything but Excel to analyse data!” If so, you have not seen STATISTICA!
Many people use Excel to analyse data and put up with the tedious slowness and limited techniques either because they don’t know any better, or they think alternatives are too hard. This seminar will show that with very little training, or even with self-teaching, it is easy to summarise and explore data many times faster than with Excel.
This seminar demonstrates the analysis of data while you watch. Because all the data is in named columns, a few clicks on menus is all it takes to calculate average values of a variable for each of hundreds or thousands of sub-categories. No need to scroll through the page to find the end of your data. Click some more options to create subcategories. A relevant graph is always at hand with another click.
Do you want to explore your data using advanced techniques such as stepwise multiple regression? Not something you do every day, but ready when you want to use it. Mostly you will use the easy to use and customisable graphs.
Sign up and let us show you by joining us online at this webinar!
to find out more and to register.
Design Calculations and Documentation with Mathcad
Webinar online on 27 March at 2:00pm – 2:45pm
Many of the major NZ engineering companies have already seen the advantages of using Mathcad for carrying out and documenting a wide variety of types of calculation – possibly because they see that their international competitors are achieving efficiency gains by using the same tools. If you or your organisation also want to use the best technology for your calculations, you can see for yourself how it works by joining us online at this webinar.
to find out more and to register.
Upcoming Conferences
HRS is supporting the following upcoming conferences.
NZ Bio Conference on 12-14 March at the Sky City Convention Centre in Auckland.
Ray will be presenting a paper and exhibiting at this conference. Delegates will be able to visit Ray and see a demonstration of products such as CLC bio workbenches at the HRS Trade Stand. You can visit the conference website at http://www.nzbio.org.nz/conference2007.
to email Ray if you wish to organise a meeting with him at the NZ Bio Conference.
IPENZ Convention on 21-23 March at the Hyatt Regency in Auckland.
IPENZ are having their annual conference soon and you can find details at http://www.ipenz.org.nz/convention.
HRS is sponsoring advertising inserts into the delegate satchels and if you are attending, you can use the reply cards to request Mathcad information packs.
to request your Mathcad information pack from Bruce.
Apply for Sponsorship
to email Leon if you would like to apply for sponsorship for your conference if you think that your delegates are users or potential users of our products.
Webinar Notifications
Our major suppliers often run Internet-based seminars, known as Webinars. For some time now we have been notifying people with an interest in MATLAB about seminars from The MathWorks, but we now plan to make the webinar notice more general, and include other products as well as MATLAB. This change has been made particularly because of the developments at MapleSoft, who have added products to their range that strongly supplement the offerings from the MathWorks, and which we feel need to be known to MATLAB and Simulink users.
If you get a Webinar notice from HRS, then expect it to contain notices of online seminars from The MathWorks, and check it out to see if it has online seminars for Maple, Mathcad, ChemOffice or other products.
to email Leon or call him on 0800 477 776 to be put on the HRS mailing list for webinar notices.
Special Offers
Maple Pre-purchase Offer
Pre-purchase your copy of Maple 11 before 1 March 2007 and pay less than the usual retail price before it is released in March.
to email Glen or call him on 0800 477 776 about this offer.
Buy before the Mathcad Price Increase
If you or a colleague are considering purchasing Mathcad, do so today or before the price rises by 25% on 31 March 2007.
to email Bruce or call him on 0800 477 776 to discuss pricing.
Product News
Maple 11
Maple has changed! It is still an enormously powerful mathematical computation engine, but it now (starting in version 10) has a structure that makes it easy to use. When you right click on an expression, a context-sensitive menu offers you an appropriate list of things to do with that expression. "Assistants", "tutors" and "tasks" are tools that guide you (or students) through the processes you need to follow to achieve what you want. Maple now fully exploits the benefits of graphical user interfaces. (But it retains the command environment for situations where that is the most convenient one.)
Maple is highly structured to support two groups of users – those doing engineering and scientific calculations, and those teaching mathematics. In particular, Maple now has a range of add-on products that allow you link in to MATLAB or to NAG libraries or to access electronic study books in many disciplines.
Users of MATLAB are strongly recommended to consider the Maple toolbox for MATLAB – this is a link that lets you define a symbolic variable in MATLAB, and then operate on it in Maple, returning results to MATLAB when you have finished. You have the full power of Maple at your disposal.
Have you considered using Simulink but find setting up the initial calculations are mind-blowing? With BlockBuilder for Simulink engineers can mathematically develop models of dynamic systems, particularly for plant control applications, and then implement them in Simulink as a subsystem block.
Do you want to model and simulate the dynamics of mechanical multibody systems? DynaFlexPro facilitates the rapid creation of system models using block diagrams and drop-down menus, where Maple’s powerful computer algebra technologies are used to create small and efficient sets of system equations in symbolic form. Combine these products with BlockBuilder to take your model directly in to Simulink!
Many of these changes occurred in Maple 10, and Maple 11 continues the process of giving engineers and mathematicians the tools they need in the form they can use. More exciting add-ons are scheduled for release during 2007, so keep watching this space.
Note: Maple 11 is sold in Academic and Professional versions. The Professional version comes bundled with the Maple Toolbox for MATLAB, the first year's EMP (maintenance) and MapleNet – a program that lets you host active Maple documents on a Web server.
Academic users of Maple should see this page: http://www.maplesoft.com/products/Maple11/academic/index.aspx
Commercial users of Maple should see http://www.maplesoft.com/products/Maple11/professionals/index.aspx
to email Glen or call him on 0800 477 776 to discuss any of these products.
Maple T.A. 3
Maple T.A. is an easy-to-use, web-based system for creating tests and assignments. Students access your questions on any browser, within time frames that you set. Maple T.A. then automatically assesses student responses and performance. It supports complex, free-form entry of mathematical equations and intelligent evaluation of responses, making it ideal for mathematics, science, or any course that requires mathematics. No knowledge of Maple is needed!
See http://www.maplesoft.com/products/mapleta/index.aspx or contact Glen for more information.
to email Glen or call him on 0800 477 776 to discuss this product.
Mathcad 14
Mathcad 14 is now available! This is the first version released by the new owners, PTC, but the changes are in more than the branding. There have been improvements to some of the solvers and to the plotting, and one neat feature facilitates comparison of two documents to find the differences between them. The symbolic engine has been replaced. Users of Pro/ENGINEER will find they can easily link their drawings to Mathcad and back again, and users of other programs can do it too, but not quite as easily.
Mathcad 13 cannot be sold after March 21, 2007. If you intend to stay on this version and think you may wish to expand your usage of the product in the future, now is the only time to buy v13. After March 21st you will only be able to purchase Mathcad 14.0.
There are some (slow-paced) demonstration movies for Mathcad at http://www.mathsoft.com/solutions/democenter.aspx. These are useful for those who know nothing about Mathcad but wish to know how it works.
to email Bruce or call him on 0800 477 776 to discuss this product.
Mathcad Tools & Tutorials
You can find a list of tutorials covering tools and tips to help you become more productive on the PTC website.
to visit the PTC website to find out more about these tools.
Mathcad 14 Academic Evaluation
Academics can obtain a 30-Day Evaluation using Mathcad 14 single user license.
to email Bruce or call him on 0800 477 776 to discuss the evaluation.
MATLAB R2007a
R2007a will be released in March, and users in maintenance can download the pre-release version now.
We will not discuss product details until the product is shipping, but there are a few things you may wish to know.
- There will be changes in the conditions to group licences (smaller groups will be allowed, but mixed network named user and standalone licenses will not).
- Release R2007a does support Windows Vista. Earlier releases are still being checked for compliance.
- Because of the structure of Vista, some products, including the compilers/builders, and the Data Acquisition toolbox, will require administrator privileges.
- R2007a adds support for the Intel®-based Mac, Windows Vista, and 64-bit Sun Solaris SPARC platforms. Support for the Solaris 32 platform and all Mac operating systems prior to 10.4.7 will be discontinued.
- Multithreaded computation will be provided for key MATLAB math functions for multicore and multiprocessor systems.
to email Bruce or call him on 0800 477 776 to discuss MATLAB.
Image Acquisition Toolbox 2
The MathWorks have released the Image Acquisition Toolbox 2, which now supports QImaging and Hamamatsu cameras used in fields such as fluorescence microscopy and particle image velocimetry. Image Acquisition Toolbox enables engineers and scientists with PC-compatible imaging hardware to capture images and video into MATLAB and Simulink for iterative image acquisition, processing, and analysis. The new version lets a broader class of engineers and scientists create customised imaging applications for embedded systems and scientific research.
Click here to read the full press release.
to email Bruce or call him on 0800 477 776 to discuss this product.
gridMathematica on Platform LSF
Wolfram Research is pleased to announce that the gridMathematica Cluster Integration Package can now also be used on Platform LSF. The Cluster Integration Package is a free utility that enables easy operation of gridMathematica on Microsoft's Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, Sun Grid Engine, and now also on Platform LSF.
to email Glen or call him on 0800 477 776 to discuss this product.
Bioinformatics database searches
Molecular biologists often need to perform searches of massive databases for the occurrences of specific DNA, RNA or protein sequences. A number of algorithms exist for this – BLAST is commonly used because it is fast, however it is also imprecise. The Smith-Waterman algorithm finds many more matches, but is too slow for most people's computers.
Modern computer processors can be used in more than one way, depending on the kind of program you run, and it turns out that database searching can be sped up by 50 to 100 times if you use the right technology. CLC have launched The Cell – a hardware/software combination that speeds up searches so that you can now afford the time to do rigorous S-W searches in place of BLAST. Do you use ClustalW alignments? Speed them up, too! (4-5 times.)
If you plan to attend the NZBio conference starting 11 March, then you can see a live demonstration of the cell in the session "Making Mountains into Molehills" on the Wednesday afternoon.
to email Ray or call him on 0800 477 776 to discuss this topic.
Revised structure and pricing for STATISTICA
StatSoft have recently re-organised their product range, bundling products that are usually sold together and applying a discount. The one that will affect most people is the "Advanced" bundle, that combines Base + Advanced Linear/Non-Linear Models + Multivariate Exploratory Techniques + Power Analysis. This product presently sells for $2460 + GST (1-user commercial) or $1285 +GST (1-user Academic) and is great value since base sells for $1810 (or $930) + GST. For a full list of bundles, contact Glen.
to email Glen or call him on 0800 477 776 to discuss pricing for this product.
SurveyPro version 4
SurveyPro allows you to build survey forms from your own and pre-packaged questions. Within the same environment, a database is built automatically so you can do manual data entry, or you can use NetCollect to build scripts that run on a web server to collect survey results on the Internet. In either case, you can use a very well-thought-out and built-in reporting tool that allows you to create tables and graphs to summarise your data.
SurveyPro 4 has now been released, and combines all the functionality of SurveyPro 3.0 and NetCollect 3, plus a few other tools. In addition, there is a respondent emailer, that allows you to manage invitations to people who you wish to respond to your web surveys. At a price of $2995 + GST this is great value!
to email Glen or call him on 0800 477 776 to discuss this product.
ChemOffice Annual Site Licenses
If you are interested in saving on licensing for your company or institution, contact Bruce to find out about the great annual site license deals we have available.
to email Bruce or call him on 0800 477 776 to discuss this item.
General News & Working with HRS
Industrial Information & Control Centre, I2C2
This centre of expertise in automatic control and process management is being established jointly by University of Auckland and AUT University. The centre will deliver technical short courses in areas such as model building, system identification and simulation, controller tuning and advanced control, and also run courses in project and plant management, and in statistical quality control. The goal is to increase the awareness of new technological developments, and to provide CPD opportunities for New Zealand companies.
The centre will also provide consulting and research opportunities for companies, and an area to showcase or test new and emerging technologies in collaboration with vendors and the Institute of Measurement & Control.
We wish David Wilson (AUT) and Brent Young (U of A) well on this venture, since we share their passion for properly using technology in industry.
to email David if you wish to discuss potential projects and collaboration with the centre.
User Stories
If you have any newsworthy user stories related to our products that you think our customers would be interested in reading, please contact Leon.
to email Leon or call him on 0800 477 776 to supply your product news.
Advertising your events on the HRS Website
If we sponsor your event, or your delegates are likely to be using one of our products, contact Leon to place details of your conference on our website.
to email Leon or call him on 0800 477 776 to advertise your event.
HRS Software Guide
If you or any of your colleagues would like a copy of our 64 page Software Guide sent to you, please contact Fiona.
to email Fiona or call her on 0800 477 776 to request a guide.
Best regards,
Leon Tepania
Marketing Manager
Hoare Research Software Ltd
Email: leon@hrs.co.nz
For all general enquiries
please phone us on
0800 477
776
New Zealand's Technical Software Source