I am happy to let you know that we have just released Maple 14 and MapleSim 4.

Maple 14 provides access to the new MapleCloud Document Exchange, which gives you an easy way to share your work with your colleagues, your students, and the entire Maple community. Other new features include more mathematics for engineering applications; performance improvements; the Maple Toolbox for MATLAB®, which is now included with Maple 14; a new numerical differential equations solver, the Cash-Karp pair; an enhanced point probe for 2-D plots; more task templates; and the ability to execute Maple documents programmatically. To name a few. See What’s New in Maple 14 for more information, and to watch a movie about the MapleCloud.

MapleSim 4 comes with a new 3-D construction environment for multibody modeling, which lets you build, visualization, and interact with a 3-D representation of your model. It also provides flexible probe management tools, a new semi-stiff solver, new components, and an enhanced Project Manager feature which organizes subsystems, probes, and attachments. For the full list, and to see a movie showing the new 3-D construction environment, see What’s New in MapleSim 4.

Maple T.A. 6 is now available. It includes connectivity with Moodle™, a popular open source course management system. It also includes a new web services API, so you can integrate TA with other course management systems, include custom-built solutions. And of course, the Maple T.A. Connector for Blackboard Software® has also been updated to work with Maple T.A. 6. Other new features include a translatable interface for international language support, increased performance, and an enhanced question repository.

The MapleSim Tire Component Library has just been released. This product is an add-on to MapleSim. It provides industry standard tire force model components such as Fiala, Calspan, and Pacejka’s magic tire formula. In addition, linear tire models and user-defined tire models are available. Once installed, the tire components work like any other MapleSim components, so you can drag them into your diagram and join them to your existing vehicle model, change parameters, plot and analyze dynamic and kinematic quantities, attach CAD images to be used in the animations, etc.

We have recently released updates to four toolboxes. Here are the highlights. More details, and instructions on how to access each one can be found on the Maplesoft downloads page.

MapleSim LabVIEW Connector - now also connected to NI VeriStand. As a result, this product gets a new name. It's now the MapleSim LabVIEW/VeriStand Connector.

MapleSim Control Design Toolbox - improvements have been made to performance, functionality, and examples.

We’ve just released a new version of the Maplesoft-MAA Placement Test Suite (PTS). PTS 5.0 includes high school prognostic tests from the MAA. The idea is that colleges/universities can offer early feedback to high school students about how they are likely to do on the institution’s math placement tests. With early feedback and time to make changes, students will be better prepared, which means they are less likely to have to take (and pay for!) remedial classes that don’t even count towards their degree.