How to Use a Mathcad Electronic Book

The advantage of a Mathcad Electronic Book is that all equations are live. You can change the values of any variables, constants, or other expressions in an Electronic book to obtain different results. You can also enter your own equations and access any of the commands on the Math palette.

If you double-click on any graph you can reformat it. The right mouse button allows you to zoom, trace, activate, disable evaluation, or reformat graphs.

Annotate Book Options

To activate options to save, review and restore edits choose Annotate Book from the Book menu. The term Section refers to the current page on the screen. A dialog will give you the option of saving/discarding each edited section if you exit the book without saving all your changes. The following options are available under the Book menu:

Save Section: To save only those changes made to the currently open section.

Save All Changes: To save all changes you've made, even those made in other sections.

View Original Section: To temporarily view the currently open section from the unmarked copy.

View Edited Section: To return to viewing the edited copy of the currently open section.

Restore Section: To replace the currently open section with the original section.

Restore All: To replace the currently open Electronic Book with the original, unmarked copy.

Copying from an Electronic Book

To copy material from an Electronic Book, just click and drag your mouse across the regions, until you see a dotted line, then drag those regions to your main Worksheet window. Be careful to include any variable definitions from other regions in the file.

To copy the entire file without need to select anything: use the Copy button in the toolbar or use the Save As button and rename the file.

If you wish to reference material from this Book without copying see Extending the Astro Utilities under Usage Notes.

Hyperlinks found in text will allow you to jump to a topic with a click of the mouse. The cursor changes to a hand when it is over an active link. The status line in the main window tells you where you will go before you click on the hyperlink.

The top left icon in each page is also a hyperlink that will bring you back to the first page in each chapter or from that page to the main Table of Contents.

The Electronic Book browser contains several toolbars that can be made visible or hidden by selecting them from the View menu. Letting the mouse pointer rest on a toolbar button for a few seconds will cause a descriptive tool-tip to appear in a small window.

The above toolbar is visible in your Electronic Book browser when the Toolbar option is checked under the View menu. It contains buttons for often used control features -- most of them navigation related. Here's what the buttons do when you click on them:

Opens the Home (Table of Contents) page of the Book.

Drops down the Web Toolbar (Address Bar on View menu), which allows access to the Internet through your Web browser. You can add bookmarks or type in an http or file address to open a Mathcad or html file on the Internet or your network.

Backtracks to the last document you viewed, and reverses the last backtrack.

Browses back to the preceding topic, and browses ahead to the next topic in the sequence.

Lists a history of all the documents you have visited during this session and lets you jump directly to them.

Searches the entire Book for a particular keyword or phrase. Just type in the dialog box and you will see a list of all the documents that contain that word. You can then jump directly to one or more of those documents, and then to the correct region.

Copies currently selected regions in the document or the whole document if nothing is selected.

Prints the current document.

Saves the current document to a filename you specify.

The Web Toolbar can be made visible or hidden by clicking the Web Toolbar button on the topmost toolbar or selecting the Address Bar option from the View menu. It contains buttons for viewing Mathcad and web pages on the Internet or local drives.

Add current page to bookmark list or Edit bookmarks to worksheets and web-page.

Reload current page.

Stop loading of current page.

Portions of text and graphics Copyrighted © 1999 by MathSoft, Inc. Reprinted by permission of MathSoft, Inc.

Astro Utilities Electronic Book Copyright © 1999 Pietro Carboni. All rights reserved.