CAD and CAM Books

I've been using AutoCAD since 1992 (Release 10 on a '386 computer with 640 kB of RAM and a then whopping 8 MB hard drive!). Based on the price of this book, the description of its contents, and most of all the picture of the gleaming high-rise building on the front cover I expected a text that would cover architectural drawing in great detail. Instead what I got was essentially a beginners' text with an elementary architectural emphasis. I skipped the first eight chapters of this nineteen-chapter book entirely. Though the information in the rest of the book was a little more more useful, it was nowhere near the level and depth I had expected. I am a very disappointed customer.
In conclusion, if you've never used AutoCAD and you are a beginner at architectural drafting, this book may be useful to you. If you don't fall into this narrow category, then you don't need this book.

Don't make the same $53.00 mistake that I made! AutoCAD for Architectural Drawing Using AutoCAD 2000 and AutoCAD for Interior Design and Space Planning Using AutoCAD 2000, both by the same authors, are essentially the same book. You should buy one or the other, but not both. After I had bought the book for interior design and space planning I went ahead and also bought the one for architectural drawing thinking that it was a totally different and more advanced book, but it isn't. The only difference is the cover and the title name; the text and the exercises are all the same. Therefore, if you buy both books you will be wasting your money on one of them.

Whether you buy one or the other, you should be aware that these books do not teach you AutoCAD 2000 but merely guide you through the process of using AutoCAD 2000 to create a few architectural drawings. In other words, to be able to use these books you must be already somewhat familiar with AutoCAD 2000, otherwise you will be frustrated and disappointed . I like the fact that unlike other books on AutoCAD that I have read that rely mostly on borrowed drawings (included in their accompanying CD), that instruct you to change or add a little line here and there, these two books force you to create the entire drawing from scratch, thereby improving tremendously your drawing abilities with AutoCAD 2000. And don't let the word "architectural" scare you; in fact, you don't have to be an architect to use any of these two books.

M.E.Reyna Miami, Florida

This is a very good books for those who had no experienced with AutoCAD and wanted to learn how to use it for Architectural Purpose. It covers almost most of the things needed for 2D (orthographic) drawing. Recommended if you are doing Architectural only.

This book takes a hands on approach to explain the ins and outs of autocad 2002. I am still working my way through it, but so far it has been a great learning tool. I don't know if my lack of indepth math skills is making a small part of the training hard or if there is a miniscule amount of of lack of clarity on the authors part that keeps me from giving this a solid A.

I am an AutoCAD instructor and we have been using tickoo's text in class for quite a few sessions now. We were delighted to see some great new and enhanced topics in the latest text and we recommend this text to our students and to anyone who is new to AutoCAD. Some of our students read the review here and were reluctant to buy this text. I would suggest that before people put their reviews here, they should check it because lot of people read these reviews and reading such reviews sometime distract them. Printout of help manual!!! You must be kidding me. Lot of explanation!!! This is what new students need I guess.

Strongly recommended for new users.

This is more or less a complete print out of the Autocad Help documents. Might be usefull as a reference but definetly not a book to learn with. I have past experience but it has been a few years since using AutoCad. To get an answer from this book, be prepared to read about every little detail possible and written in a very "professional" language - but that's not really necessary. So many words are in bold, it is useless. Seems the writer wanted to write even more but was out of ink. Easier just to use the Acad Help.

Excelent material to start to learn Inventor, is easy to undestend.

Luis Villa

An excellent book, yes it may have some info that can be accessed from the help, but it goes far beyond that, and the advanced section of the book does a great job in exploring the details of the features particular to Inventor, don't forget the tutorial CD that comes with the book, it is another complete training manual in itself. I read the whole book and I did all the tutorials, I am including it in the curriculum of my students, and I recommend it to anyone serious about learning Inventor.

The main material of this book is a rehash/dryrun and listing of what the Inventor user interface and menus do in each chapter. There is not much content on how to actually use the concepts and techniques of Inventor to do real stuff. The authors have decided to put all that stuff on the CD. They have some kind of a compiled html file that walks you thru the techniques of each chapter with busted exercises. The CD is very poorly made with lots of chapters entirely missing and incomplete exercises in many other chapters. The program constantly crashes. I am surprised that a respected name like Autodesk would put out a book like this. That is my two cents worth.

If you are just starting to learn how to use ADT, this is not the book for you. The author assumes you already know how to use many of the commands during the first exercise. The directions for each exercise are very vague and difficult to follow. His directions are so bad, that I have been stuck on the first exercise for hours. I will definitely be returning this book. It was a big waste of money.

If you want to get a good beginner book, try David Frey's "AutoCAD 2005 No Experience Required". This book is more geared towards AutoCAD than ADT, but you will get a solid understanding of 2D and 3D commands. There are also excellent chapters on setting up layouts and printing. This book may be difficult to follow in ADT, since the menus in AutoCAD are a little different. I recommend that you load the AutoCAD menus into ADT to complete the assignments in this book. This may be a difficult task, but it can be done by using the "Menuload" command.

I have been working with ARD since its 2nd release. It is a very good program but it is hard keep up with all the new features introduced with each new release. With Mr. Goldberg's book I was able to quickly find new tools that were relavent to my work and they are very well explain in concise hands on exercises. I have quite a library of Cad and ARD books and have spent time and money
learning the progam at colleges and through Autodesk courses.
This book is the best in its field that I have come across.

Advanced only. ADT Goldberg ($50 w/o CD & no email support like Paul Aubin) opens the movie with you already overboard in 6 foot swells and no life jacket. It is advanced, highly cryptic for advanced ADT architects ONLY. If you need ANY SUPPORT AT ALL buy Paul Aubin who gives great free email. Goldberg was obviously highly edited to save paper. IT SHOULD COME WITH AN EXPANDED VERSION ON DISK with more complete tutorial instructions. Agree with all comments below, obviously the beginner below did not understand the advanced nature of this book. This book is GEARED FOR PRODUCTION not learning. We all work in a ridiculous "get a project out the door" environment, HOWEVER the book did get pubed to help us poor chaps that had to produce FANTASTIC accurate work in very short times for a real client(usually rich and wanting great value from the pro). Best buy VIZ by Paul Aubin also, which is an amazing book.

This book clears up a lot of problems with beginners!
Don't let the first review point you away. Version 20 is similar to 2000i, although this book is great. I work with several different levels of Pro\e users and this helps show the lower level user how it is done. Downloads do help also.
We here also use the "advanced" book, it is very close to this one but goes a small bit further into "Relations" and "Parameters".

great book...it helped me out in Mechanical Engineering classes at the University of Texas at Austin

I was a teaching assistant for a course teaching Pro Engineer from the version of this book. I had about 100 students, and know the previous version intimately. I have not seen the 2000i version, so take that into account, but the model made (and shown on the cover) is identical. . . . I was NOT impressed. The book will be next to useless as a reference, having no index. There are factual errors in the directions and the diagrams shown in the book, every week we would put out an errata to go with that week's assignment from the book. The book was the first one published for 20, and it showed that it was written in a hurry. I, the other TA's, the Prof, and all of the students were not enamoured with the book. I reccommend you try a different book.

This book has a good theory and some examples to begin in the knowledge of CAD & CAM systems construction and understand. At least, a student interested in CAD/CAM system will find the basis of geometric representation, and how to construct some graphics routines to CAD/CAM System

This book covers geometry theory for modeling lines, curves, surfaces and solids.

The book does not cover the programming theory.

This book is extremely outdated. It was a required text for one of my classes, and I just sold it back because there is almost no useful information that is still valid. Many, many pages of this text are wasted on technology that is no longer used.

Sham Tickoo know a lot about CATIA, but I figured out more just messing around with the program than I did from trying to navigate through his book. The main problem is that there are so many applications for parametric modeling (my interests are in architecture), and Tickoo had to focus on something specific for his examples, which were not related to architecture. I do recommend the book, however, because it helped me overcome problems on several occasion where I was stumped and could not figure out where to go next.

The book helps from the basics to some advanced modelling techniques. I have found it very useful in most of the areas required in design

I started with pdf tutorials downloaded from the internet and didn't quiet get a clear idea of using catia, I bought this book to get to really learn catia V5 and I have to say its a very good book. Everithing is well explaned with tutorials, exercices and helpfull tips. Also mention that it is focused in designing,that is the first step, from here after you can continue wihth kinematics, FEA,Machining,etc.. with other books.My conclusion is that its a really good first step in the world of Catia V5.

As its title suggested, this book gives lots of explanation to terms commonly used in computer Architecture. It is a step-by-step guide to CPU design in one respect and a dictionary in another respect. It can be a reference/checklist for practitioners but I will not recommend this book for learning. There are far better self-contained books on CPU architecture/design in the market:
(1) Computer Organization by Carl Hamacher, Z. Vranesic & S Zaky.
(2) Computer Organization and Design by David Patterson & John Hennessy.

I give this book only one star for the following reasons:
(1) The book is overpriced. USD100 for a small dictionary/checklist? This may be OK for a practitioner but certainly not for college graduates.
(2) The book layout and diagrams are not professional. Look at the two books I recommend and you know what is mean by professional editing and sincere writing.
(3) The physical dimension of the book is not right. Basically, the paper size should be bigger. It seems that Springer (the Publisher) like to print 9.3 x 6 inches books. That is why you will see many texts and graphics (in this book) are so small that you can hardly read.

The books gives insightful ideas and tricks for CPU design. The ideas span from architecture to logical and physical (layout) synthesis, and they come from real, practical implementations. The book also connects the dots by its scope. The faq and anwers are presented in a nice interesting tabular fashion. Great book.

I used to work with this author at Sun. When I was in a book store, I saw this book and bought it. I went through some of the chapters in this book and its really an excellent one. Must have book if you are in this field.

This book is written for the advanced IC designer and systems engineer (practicing engineer or smart grad student.) It's not for the novice. It introduces all the analog-to-digital conversion and sigma-delta concepts, but it assumes you know basic concepts like how to design an op amp and how MOS transistors work. If you don't, it's better to start with Grey & Meyer or with Razavi's introductory books. The publisher, Kluwer, prints a lot of PhD dissertations - which is what this book looks like.

If you have a good foundation in the basics of modern electronics, you'll learn a lot about sigma-delta and low power analog design. Otherwise, you should concentrate on the fundamentals before moving on to this level of material.

This book takes the reader through a step-by-step intro to sigma-delta modulation. It's full of practical hints on design and testing of A/D converters. It also has a thorough discussion of noise in switched-capacitor circuits and compares the switched-cap technique with continuous-time and switched-current. It's a great reference book for all analog, mixed-signal and switched-capacitor designers, not just those interested in sigma-delta modulation.

After spending sometime reading this book, I find that this book still has a lot of room for improvement. This book does not have any proof on all the results that it states. It lacks all the required basic concepts and skips some important topics (IMHO). Nevertheless, it shows a lot of state of the art circuits and applications. This book is great as a reference book if you consider yourself an expert on ADC. There are a lot of mathematics without any detail proof. For a hundred dollar, I am expecting the author to do some work rather than trying to make some quick money. I am returning my copy.

I don't think any other book deals with behavioral synthesis for low-power in as much detail as this one. The quality of the work described is excellent. The writing style is clear and easy to understand. The chapters on RTL power estimation and power management during hardware design were also very informative. The book has an exhaustive list of references as well.

In summary, it is A MUST BUY for researchers in the field of behavioral and RT level low-power design. EXCELLENT BOOK.

A very good overview of techniques for power estimation and minimization above the logic level. Unlike a large number of Kluwer books which are re-published PhD theses, this one actually presents a survey of various techniques. I found the chapters on register-transfer level power estimation and power management especially useful.

Overall, this book is a great source of information if you are looking for an overview of different techniques to model or minimize power consumption in RTL designs.

This books claims to be a good source of information about high-level synthesis for power for a wide variety of people but its more of a quick-and-dirty overview. Coverage is very uneven and the book could do with more in-depth examples. The authors have apparently not even bothered to run this through a decent spell-checker. I wish I had spent my money elsewhere!