mcad2py

Convert PTC Mathcad Prime worksheets (.mcdx) into runnable Python — either a Jupyter notebook (one region per cell, results echoed inline like Mathcad's =) or a plain .py script. Units are preserved with Pint.

A .mcdx file is a zip archive of XML; the math is stored as an expression tree, so the conversion walks that tree into an intermediate representation and emits Python from it.

Install

pip install mcad2py

Or from a clone, for development:

git clone https://github.com/ChristianCruger/mcad2py
cd mcad2py
pip install -e ".[dev]"

Requires Python 3.10+. Dependencies: pint, nbformat, sympy, numpy, scipy, matplotlib, Pillow.

Usage

# Jupyter notebook (default)
mcad2py convert worksheet.mcdx                 # -> worksheet.ipynb
mcad2py convert worksheet.mcdx -o out.ipynb

# Plain Python script
mcad2py convert worksheet.mcdx -f py           # -> worksheet.py
mcad2py convert worksheet.mcdx -o - -f py      # to stdout

Or from Python:

from mcad2py import convert_file
print(convert_file("worksheet.mcdx", fmt="py"))

Example

A Mathcad region f_cd := 30 MPa / 1.5 = (displayed in MPa) becomes, in a notebook cell:

f_cd = 30 * ureg.MPa / 1.5
f_cd.to(ureg.MPa)        # the bare last line echoes "20 megapascal", like Mathcad's "="

Mathcad trig handles angle units automatically; generated code matches this via small angle-aware helpers (from mcad2py.runtime import sin, cos, tan, cot), so tan(phi) works whether phi is in deg or rad.

Converted code needs mcad2py installed to run. The output isn't standalone: it imports mcad2py.runtime for the unit- and shape-aware helpers that give Mathcad's semantics rather than Python's (angle-aware trig, matmul, index_build, solve_block, …). If you send a converted .py or .ipynb to someone else, they need pip install mcad2py too — along with the dependencies above, since the generated code uses Pint, NumPy, SciPy and matplotlib directly.

What's supported

• := definitions and inline = evaluations, with display-unit overrides
• Arithmetic, unit scaling (30 MPa), roots, %, comparisons and boolean connectives
• Constants (π, e, ∞), Greek/subscripted identifiers (f_cd, β, ϕ → f_cd, beta, phi)
• Vectors and matrices — literals, 0-based indexing (including the two-subscript form), ranges, range-built vectors and matrices, and the full built-in family: rows/cols/identity/ augment/submatrix, det/lsolve/geninv/rank/rref, the norm and condition sets, the eigen and singular-value set, sort/reverse. Mathcad's one · is resolved into a scalar, matrix or dot product by inferring shapes across the whole sheet.
• Functions — the complete trigonometric and hyperbolic families (angle-aware), logs, powers and roots, rounding, min/max, linterp
• Programs — inline and block if, plus multi-line imperative programs (loops, local ← assignments, return, try) emitted as real Python defs
• Solve blocks — numeric Given/Find (via scipy.optimize), including a block that defines a function; symbolic solve/simplify/factor/expand via SymPy
• Integrals and sums — definite and double integrals (scipy.integrate), indexed Σ
• Plots — x-y (function and parametric, including a plot whose variable is never defined — Mathcad's invented -10..10 domain), contour and 3D, rendered with matplotlib
• Controls and tables — ComboBox row selectors, data tables, scriptable controls (via their cached value), text/comment regions → markdown cells
• Images embedded from picture regions

Anything not yet handled is emitted as a clearly marked # TODO unsupported stub rather than dropped, so the output always loads. See docs/mathcad-function-coverage.md for the full category-by-category map and what's next.

Tests

The suite lives in the git repository (it is not part of the published package, since each test converts and executes a real .mcdx fixture from references/):

git clone https://github.com/ChristianCruger/mcad2py
cd mcad2py
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest

Every test converts a reference worksheet, runs the generated code, and checks the computed values against Mathcad's own cached results in that file's result.xml.

Scope

Targets Mathcad Prime (.mcdx, worksheet50/math50 schema). Legacy Mathcad 15 (.xmcd) is a future target — the parser is structured behind an intermediate representation so a second front-end can be added without changing the code generators.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.