Thank you for all the suggestions.  I initially used the technique suggested by Axel, but didn't want to have to keep remembering the scaling factors.  I indend to use the Trace command, which would require post multiplication and I have quite a few matrices, so keeping track of factors isn't practical.  If I do what Marvin suggests, (which is how I desired to solve the problem) it means that the Trace command will not work.

The factrix command is ideal, so I use this.  Thank you very much for all your help and suggestions; very much appreciated.

I am generating representation matrices for Tetrahedral and Octahedral Double Groups, so I need the character (trace).

Cheers;

Robert Ward

Edgardo; thank you for your help.

This is exactly the problem I am describing. 

When I was using algsubs, but with an eqaution label rather than 'constraint' it wasn't working; but now does thank you.

One other error message I got on this was "cannot work out order in c", but it's OK now.

Cheers;

Robert Ward

Edgardo

I put that line of code into my sheet, and it still takes as long.  I have several bracket rules between the `a's and `b's, and also alpha and betas.  I think that this is the source of the problem and can't see anyway around it.

Unless there is another command which is much faster...

Cheers;

Rob

Thank you Doug & Alec, both methods work as desired.

Kind Regards;

Rob