# How to use \bigtimes without pain

I've been fighting with mathabx lately and it's not really worth my time, so I tried switching to MnSymbol which also modifies some of my regular symbols. Is the best solution just to make my own operator of times that's larger than normal and what's the best way to do this? Or is there a library that adds the various variable sized symbols not covered in the amsmath packages.

It can be done in a similar way as I suggested in this answer to a question about blackboard bold characters: Find and copy the relevant lines from the mathabx files.

\documentclass{article}
\DeclareFontFamily{U}{mathx}{\hyphenchar\font45}
\DeclareFontShape{U}{mathx}{m}{n}{
<5> <6> <7> <8> <9> <10>
<10.95> <12> <14.4> <17.28> <20.74> <24.88>
mathx10
}{}
\DeclareSymbolFont{mathx}{U}{mathx}{m}{n}
\DeclareMathSymbol{\bigtimes}{1}{mathx}{"91}
\begin{document}
$\bigtimes\limits_{j=1}^n X_j$
\end{document}


Is using Xe/LuaLaTeX with unicode-math an option? There you can just use \bigtimes (or nearly any other conceivable math symbol) without having to worry about any additional packages or fonts.

I used:

\usepackage{stmaryrd}
\DeclareMathOperator*{\bigtimes}{\vartimes}


This solution I found at http://matheraum.de/forum/Kartesisches_Produkt_in_Latex/t278084.