SCILAB 5.3.3

[MikeTil]

Well, since the moderator didn't think a new forum was a good idea I hope starting a new thread about this is O.K. I just got the latest Windows build of SCILAB 5.3.3 I know that it will take me years to learn how to use most of its features (not all of them), but I strongly recommend everyone downloads a copy (it's FREE) and give it a try. You can get a copy for Windows, Linux of MacOS from this link, http://www.scilab.org/products/scilab/download I also got some documentation for it, but this may be one area where it's lacking So, if anyone knows of any good docs on line, please let me know.

And, Johannes, you seem to know a lot about it, so if I have any questions, I am sure to post them here for you.

In any case, I strongly recommend everyone grabs a copy and gives it a try.

[Evan Tromblay]

Mike, lots of documentation is available fro SCILAB, it all depends on what you are looking for I borrowed (couldn't afford it) Gillberto Urroz's book (http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/ ... e%3DScilab) and I would recommend it to anyone who can afford the $350+ price tag, new.

For those who can't afford it, certain chapters of the book are available electronically from InfoClearingHouse, http://www.infoclearinghouse.com/tiki-i ... age=Scilab

There are a bunch of books in French (since that's where the program was developer), but I don;t speak any French, so they are not very useful to me

If you were a MATLAB user, or are familiar with MATLAB, than this may be very useful to you (oops, I could not attach the PDF - hello, forum admin !!!), so here is the link, http://wiki.scilab.org/Tutorials?action ... Matlab.pdf

And a whole lot of tutorials for it, here http://www.scilab.org/support/documentation/tutorials

I hope some of these help. I am sure there are many more documents, I'm just not aware of all of them.

BTW, I am glad to see this gem being discussed here!

[BillRotando]

Well, since the moderator didn't think a new forum was a good idea I hope starting a new thread about this is O.K. I just got the latest Windows build of SCILAB 5.3.3 I know that it will take me years to learn how to use most of its features (not all of them), but I strongly recommend everyone downloads a copy (it's FREE) and give it a try. You can get a copy for Windows, Linux of MacOS from this link, http://www.scilab.org/products/scilab/download I also got some documentation for it, but this may be one area where it's lacking So, if anyone knows of any good docs on line, please let me know.

And, Johannes, you seem to know a lot about it, so if I have any questions, I am sure to post them here for you.

In any case, I strongly recommend everyone grabs a copy and gives it a try.

Sounds impressive. Do they have a version for the iPad2? Or for the Android OS?

[MikeTil]

Well, since the moderator didn't think a new forum was a good idea I hope starting a new thread about this is O.K. I just got the latest Windows build of SCILAB 5.3.3 I know that it will take me years to learn how to use most of its features (not all of them), but I strongly recommend everyone downloads a copy (it's FREE) and give it a try. You can get a copy for Windows, Linux of MacOS from this link, http://www.scilab.org/products/scilab/download I also got some documentation for it, but this may be one area where it's lacking So, if anyone knows of any good docs on line, please let me know.

And, Johannes, you seem to know a lot about it, so if I have any questions, I am sure to post them here for you.

In any case, I strongly recommend everyone grabs a copy and gives it a try.

Sounds impressive. Do they have a version for the iPad2? Or for the Android OS?

Bill, I am not sure, but I don't think so. I didn't see any reference to the iPAD on their web site. You can take a look at the site and see if I missed something.

[MikeTil]

@Evan, I downloaded the PDF for MATLAB users, as well, from the linked site, and I tried to upload it to this section to make it easier for the users, but was denied. I have sent a private message to the moderator to see if it can be taken care of. Will post here, when I get a reply.

[Dale Valenti]

Excellent thread. I am very new to SCILAB, having worked with a number of "classic" programming languages in the past, and I find it very powerful. While trying to learn how to use this wonderful tool, I am going through some simple applications and one of them is giving me a hard time. It's modeling a solution for a system of 5 simultaneous equations with 5 unknowns. I know, I know, it's a trivial problem, but modeling it in SCILAB is giving me a heartburn. If anyone can give me some pointers to get started, I would really appreciate it.

[Johannes Tass]

Excellent thread. I am very new to SCILAB, having worked with a number of "classic" programming languages in the past, and I find it very powerful. While trying to learn how to use this wonderful tool, I am going through some simple applications and one of them is giving me a hard time. It's modeling a solution for a system of 5 simultaneous equations with 5 unknowns. I know, I know, it's a trivial problem, but modeling it in SCILAB is giving me a heartburn. If anyone can give me some pointers to get started, I would really appreciate it.

Dale, that is indeed a very trivial app, with the tools of SCILAB

Set the coefficients of the A matrix, A=[1,2,.....]
Set the coefficients of the B vector, B=[1,2,3,...]
The, invert A, and multiply by B to get the Y vector, Y=inv(A)*B

That's it. Now, try doing that in 3 lines in your classic programming language

[Dale Valenti]

Thanks, Johannes. I know the concept was very simple, I said so in my post. I was getting stuck on the very first step of declaring the matrix B. But, it turned out, it was my own confusion about using commas and semi-colons in the definition. I was declaring B=[1,2,3,4,5] instead of B=[1;2;3;4;5] which was resulting in a 5x1 matrix instead of the 1x5, so subsequent operations were messed up.

[MikeTil]

For those who are interested in uploading PDFs, I received this from the moderator,

The PDF extension is rejected, by default, because PDFs are files that are sometimes used by rogue users to attack systems. Since this is a fairly controlled board, it was allowed and you should now be able to upload PDF files (still subject to the 1 Mb file size limit).

[jerryt]

Excellent thread. I am very new to SCILAB, having worked with a number of "classic" programming languages in the past, and I find it very powerful. While trying to learn how to use this wonderful tool, I am going through some simple applications and one of them is giving me a hard time. It's modeling a solution for a system of 5 simultaneous equations with 5 unknowns. I know, I know, it's a trivial problem, but modeling it in SCILAB is giving me a heartburn. If anyone can give me some pointers to get started, I would really appreciate it.

Dale, that is indeed a very trivial app, with the tools of SCILAB

Set the coefficients of the A matrix, A=[1,2,.....]
Set the coefficients of the B vector, B=[1,2,3,...]
The, invert A, and multiply by B to get the Y vector, Y=inv(A)*B

That's it. Now, try doing that in 3 lines in your classic programming language

Johannes, I don't mean to knock Scilab, but I can do what you suggest with two commands in ASEASY for Windows. The Array Invert and the Array Multiply commands off the menu. And all in from of me in the cells of a spreadsheet. And, ASEASY is free as well So I don't see any advantage in using Scilab (at least not for this type of analysis).

[Johannes Tass]

Well, jerryt, that all sounds good, but try that with matrices that are 50x50, or 100x100 Nothing against aseasy, but...

[jerryt]

I don't think aseasy handles any more than 20x20 matrices, but how many times do you have systems of twenty equations to solve? Come on, let's be realistic. I still say that for the majority of cases aseasy is more than adequate. I'm sure scilab has its place in the selection of analytic tools, as well.

[Dale Valenti]

Anyone around here know what the difference between Scilab and SciCosLab is? I see references for both out there, and it's really confusing.

[GradPhys]

I used matlab and then scilab for a few years. both excellent products. As far as I know, scicoslab was a competing product that was started from some people that broke off the original scilab team, because they thought scilab development was not progressing fast enough, or something (I am not sure). For a while, they were both maintained in parallel, but scilab progressed significantly, so lately I don't know if scicoslab is still being developed.