Worksheets and Regions

When you start Mathcad, you open up a Mathcad worksheet. You can have as many worksheets open as you want.

Regions

Mathcad lets you enter equations, text, plots, and images anywhere you like in the worksheet. Each element that you create in your worksheet is a "region." An invisible rectangle surrounds each region. To see the regions, choose Regions from the View menu, or drag the mouse across them to see dotted lines surrounding them.

Creating Regions

Click in a blank spot in your worksheet to get the red crosshair cursor.

  1. To create a math region, just start typing. Mathcad understands that you are typing mathematics. The cursor turns into a pair of blue math editing lines.
  2. To create a text region, you can choose Text Region from the Insert menu, type a ["], or start typing and once you type a space, Mathcad changes the math region to text. The cursor turns into the red text insertion point.

Selecting Regions

To select a single region, simply click on it. Mathcad shows a rectangle around the region. To select multiple regions:

  1. Click and drag across the regions before releasing the mouse.

  2. Press [Ctrl] and click on each region you want to select.

  3. Click on the first region of several, press the [Shift] key, then click on the last region to select everything between the two regions.

After selecting one or more regions, you can move, delete, or apply formatting to them. If you select a single region, you can edit it.

Note:

Resizing Regions

When you select a single region containing graphs, text, pictures, images, or components, you see three black square "handles" at the right, bottom, and rightmost corner of the region. Click and drag on the handles to change the length and width of the region. Note that there are additional methods for wrapping text regions.

Moving Regions

  1. Select the region(s) as described above.

    selected text

  2. Move the mouse pointer to one of the borders of a region. The pointer turns into a small hand.

    small hand pointer

  3. Press and hold down the mouse button.

  4. Drag the mouse. The selected region(s) move with it. When the region(s) are in position, release the mouse button.

  5. You can also drag region(s) into another open worksheet.

Overlapping Regions

You can move one region on top of another. To separate them, use Separate Regions from the Format menu, but be careful that math regions don't move and change calculation order. To move a particular region to the top or bottom, right-click on it and choose Bring to Front or Send to Back from the menu.

Nudging and Aligning regions

You can use the arrow keys on your keyboard to nudge selected regions up, down, left, or right. Holding down the arrow key moves the regions more quickly. To nudge a single region, you must drag-select it.

You can arrange regions using Alignment buttons or menu commands to align them on the top or left edges.

Copying, Cutting, and Pasting Regions

  1. Select the regions.

  2. Choose Copy or Cut from the Edit menu.

  3. You can paste the regions either in the same worksheet or in another worksheet. You can even paste math regions inside a text region.

Formatting Regions

Regions can be formatted either using the Format menu, or by right-clicking on the region to open its Properties dialog.

Selecting multiple regions allows you to change properties common to the regions for more than one region at a time.

Annotating Expressions

After creating a math expression, you can note its source. You can annotate a math region, or just a portion of one, by selecting the expression (or subexpression, or single variable or number) to annotate, right-clicking on it, and choosing Annotate Selection.

Mathcad can visually indicate annotations in your worksheet with colored parentheses. To view these parentheses, choose Annotations from the View menu. To change the color of the parentheses, choose Color > Annotation from the Format menu.

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