AutoCAD Books

This book presents the basic concepts of Computer-Aided Design. The author wrote a book which should be understandable to everyone who wants to learn the basic aspects of the Computer-Aided Design thoery. However, i doubt if this book is helpful for an advanced reader or a graduate student who is looking for more specialized or analytically represented concepts.

The book contains a wide range of drafting standards and other information. It contains informations on such things as screw fittings, tolerances, and welding symbols. However, the book is limited in relevant material in regards to AutoCAD R14. I would not recommend this book for someone who wants to learn the commands for AutoCAD.

The book seems like a good book for new users of Autodesks Mechanical Desktop 4.0 but much too basic for the 1 yr+ user looking for things that might have been missed when reading the CBT that is included with MDT4.0. Also, Amazon lists the book at 224 pages, the one they sent me has 195. Gee, wonder where the pages went?

This book is not for someone wanting to self-teach. I was stumped at chapter 2.
This text makes the assumption the reader has other sources available to them-like an instructor or some basic knowledge (or I've found on other reviews,even a different book to look things up!). I don't want to beat myself up with trial & error only having "HELP" to help. Not a true step-by -step introduction for novices!
I DO like how the book has a cummulative project that builds as it goes & at the end you'll have a set of drawings. I'm ordering an different book so hopefully I can get to that point!

I was expecting a more detailed book to use in learning ACAD 2007. This book is very brief. You need to have another book, one of the larger AutoCad books, to learn the program. This book is best as a reference. Saying that though, I really like the book. The artwork is great, text and color crisp and very readable. Now if the author will make it a real introduction to Acad it would definitely rate a "5+".

Although the content is O.K. I'm very disappointed with the book itself. It's all in black and white with no color. The pictures are not very bad- hard to see, especially with no color. The paper is very low quality and the entire book is only a quarter inch thick or so with a paper cover. If I had only paid $10-20 for the book it would be all right but $60 is a little hard to swallow. I realize this is a technical manual but for the price I believe it should be of higher quality.

This book is far from ideal. My background is computers, and I'm used to documentation being written to tell me what I need to know, quickly. This book is a set of tutorials--it is NOT a reference. When I need to know something specific this book is nearly useless. If you don't really know what you want to learn and want to be led through a series of exercises this book may be useful. However, if you're starting from zero, I recommend "AutoCAD 2002: No Experience Required" by David Frey, which is written much more clearly and will more quickly give you a taste of all (or most) elements of AutoCAD. Omura's book required spending too much time on things I didn't need to know to get to what I did want to know.

Another major complaint is that this book is loaded with typos and errors. Clearly it was not proofread. Numbers in examples don't add up (example: last paragraph on p. 221: two times twelve is NOT forty-eight), assumptions are made about all settings being in their default positions (not safe if you're using someone else's computer) and commands that have not yet been covered are referred to. In the chapter on AutoLISP both the first and the second example programs have typos in them and if you don't have a programming background you could tear your hair out trying to figure out what you're doing wrong. I started to keep a list of all the errors I found, but it seems there's one every couple of pages. (Incidentally, I didn't find a single typo in David Frey's book, and I went through the entire thing.)

Finally I should mention the CD-ROM. The first thing this CD-ROM did was crash the computer I was using. After rebooting--twice--it still crashed when trying to run the installation program. This was running a recent installation of Windows ME with over 500MB of RAM. I was able to copy the example files off the disc manually, but this whole package clearly meets a very low standard of quality assurance.

Fortunately I'm about at the point where I'm able to find what I need in the online documentation, and this book was not completely useless in teaching me enough to reach that point. However, I find it hard to imagine there isn't something far superior out there that I could have used instead. This book could be worse, but it's far from ideal.

I had just received this book from the post a few days ago. After fliping thru' the contents, the following are my sincere comments:
1. It is well written and easily understood by those with experience but not to the novice of the subject.
2. It is a solid practical approach which should be useful for those who wants to further their knowledge and experience in 3D modelling.
3. Only complain is that the author should have a diagramatic approach of the lessons to cater for new starters of the subject.

This book has some very good ideas and can point you in the right direction. However, they would have been better off going into a bit more detail in some of the examples. For instance, with a bit more Sketcher information, you could work along with their problems without all the guesswork. My feeling is that they teach you as if you already have mastered the subject; I spent several hours pouring over the PTC reference books. It's a good reference for the intermediate user, but by no means is it the end-all of Pro/E books.

Why does a book on AutoCAD 2002 come out in 2005? Especially when there is already AutoCAD 2005 out, and AutoCAD 2006 will be released soon? The tardiness of this book is a little strange.

Ok, if you are new to AutoCAD, then you need to learn the basics. And in all probability, the majority of the book's explanations about the 2002 version will apply to the 2005 and 2006 versions. AutoCAD has been out long enough that the basics of two and three dimensional modelling are well established and stable. So the book won't be a total loss, if you already have it.

Then again, if you haven't gotten the book, try a different, more up to date version. You should not have to get a new book for every AutoCAD annual revision. But getting a more recent book means that you can usefully retain it longer than this 2002 book.