These tips primarily apply to versions of Maple V for Windows 3.1X.

1. This may sound very trivial, but you should use use a fast computer with enough RAM (>= 16 Mbytes).
2. Increase the virtual memory size of your Windows system when using large (>100) values for the grid option of plot3d. This will become necessary if an error message occurs: 'The memory resources have been exhausted ...'. Although the calculation itself does not seem to require much RAM space the generation of fractal relies on heavy disk swapping if you have little RAM.
3. If you are using Windows 3.1X, always restart it after you have completed a fractal computation and saved the results; if you create two or more fractals during one Maple session the system might crash. Also sometimes when terminating Maple memory resources do not seem to be freed altogether.
4. Use Release 3 instead of Release 4 if possible, because the former is around 100 per cent faster when generating fractals using plot3d.
5. Do not run other applications (including screen savers) while calculating fractals, the system may crash sooner or later despite Maple's (R3's) appreciated stability in the Windows 3.11 environment.
6. Switch off the monitor to avoid any burnings of the screen. A computation my take two hours or even more on Pentium PCs.
7. Often there seems to be no progress - however this does not mean that MS Windows has already crashed, only the status bar is not updated in Release 3 and 4.
8. First and last of all, create fractals with FRACTINT for it saves a lot of time and offers multiple options for manipulation. The Mandelbrot set for example (the first image in this fractal series) requires around 25 minutes of computation time with Maple V Release 3 on a Pentium 90 with 16 Mbytes RAM whereas FRACTINT takes only 2 seconds on the same computer. FRACTINT is freeware.

MAPLE V FRACTALS Tips #1.03 current as of May 14, 1999
Author: Alexander F. Walz, alexander.f.walz@t-online.de
Original file location: http://www.math.utsa.edu/mirrors/maple/mfrtips.htm