Thank you for the responses, but unfortunately this is not practical for my situation.  The example that I posted in part of a larger calculation procedure that I wanted to show.  Using symbols instead of numbers, the calculation eventually "grows" to over 75 pages for one calculation.

I showed this Maple output to a college professor who was surprised by the result.  He uses a different math program.  I am disappointed in Maple here.

This post is to provide more info on a previous post "Numerator and denominator not in lowest terms".

Maple is internally multiplying the numerator and denominator of a fraction by a whole number, but it does not clear this number when OTHER VARIABLES are present.  This causes the numerator and denominator to appear very large (although still correct).  Does anyone know a way to prevent Maple from doing this?

-Rich

> eqn3 := a56*x3+b56*y3+c56*z3-L56 = 0;
                   cos(theta) x3 + sin(theta) y3 - 1. = 0
> y3 := solve(eqn1, y3);
                       -2.0711 x3 - 1.9236 z3 + 6.6023
> solve(eqn3, x3);
              19236. sin(theta) z3 - 66023. sin(theta) + 10000.
              -------------------------------------------------
                    10000. cos(theta) - 20711. sin(theta)     
> eqn3 := .5*x3+.4*y3+.3*z3-L56 = 0;
                    -0.32844 x3 - 0.46944 z3 + 1.6409 = 0
> solve(eqn3, x3);
                             -1.4293 z3 + 4.9960