CAD and CAM Books

Look at the utilities that are supplied with the book. The script maker is a great utility for processing specific operations to a number of drawings such as converting drawings from release 14 back to release 13 or 12. It is similar to the batch plotting utility supplied by Autodesk in release 14 except that it can process any number of AutoCAD commands not just plotting. Autodesk has implemented some of the routines in this book in release 14 but not all. Good source for customizing AutoCAD.

Although many tools are given to the reader to use; with the exception of material of 'dialogue box programing'; this is not a book for those who want to find out how things are done with autolisp. In addition, I found that there was an absence of information on R13 features such as groups and dictionary items. The book index could use a subsection which lists where topic items are buried in the 'toolbox.lsp' and 'sample.lsp' library items which are the main topics covered in the book

I'm still waiting for someone to write a book on 3-D modeling that is not cryptic, does not attempt to assume you know the direction the author takes in their instruction and just starts out with the simplest of routines. Guess I'll have to wait a little longer.

I have used this book for 4 semesters to introduce Pro/ENGINEER part models, assemblies, and drawings. Students take the course with wide variety of backgrounds, some are previous users of Pro/ENGINEER, and some have no experience with any CAD program, and most have had some CAD experience. The tutorials are easy to follow, but not overly detailed. The problems presented at the end of each chapter allow the students to get enough practice and apply what the tutorials introduced. The best thing about the book is that the students seem to like it and are able to learn from it.

Some one who wants to beagin with DE. This the good starting point. Book started with good conceptual backgroud and carried away with codeing details of DE. Kenneth puts enough efforts to clear concept behind DE. Only thing missing is that book demands little background with GAs, EAs and optimization theory.Other wise nice book for those who are familiarized with concept of evolutionary techniques.

I bought the book simply because the authors are the original developers of the algorithm, and hope to get some more information than what I learned from the literature (isolated individual publications over the years).

I am a little disappointed, and feeling regretted spending nearly $70 on this book. That said, though, I would like to give a 3.75 stars if amazon allows me to do so.

In general, the English seems not very well polished sometimes could hinder the understanding. The code can be used to help understand the algorithm but be warned, they might not be amenable for direct use in any serious software development.

I spend more than 3 days reading the book but I feel what I got from the book is not even comparable to what I learned in just 1 hours from for example the following paper
Jouni Lampinen and Ivan Zelinka, "Mixed Variable Non-linear Optimization By Differential Evolution". The paper gives very clear and concise description of DE. (The author of the paper was the last author of the book).

Finally, it is my opinion that: if you are completely new to Differential Evolution, it is not advisable to spend any money on this book. You would easily get lost by the overwhelming implementation details. For the purpose of learning Differential Evolution, relevant papers, wikipedia, or visiting various links on the subject would help you even better learn the algorithm. As a matter of fact (at least to me) the original papers by these authors are far more better (in terms of conciseness and clarity) and accessible than what they cook in this book.

However, if you already have some exposure to Differential Evolution,but would like to know the specific implementation details or more in-depth theoretical discussions, the book can provide something more, especially regarding the implementation details such as initialization, crossover, scaling factor etc that not readily available (or omitted) from isolated publications.

It seems to me it is just a summary of work done by others in
the ATE field over the years. The explanations of how a device
fault is detected are not clear in most of the cases presented
in the book. The book emphasizes too much on fault
modeling but not enough on test applications and techniques.

Certainly not a good text book for students nor it
is a good book for ATE engineers. However, if you are looking
for some quick reference, this book is a good place to start
because it contains brief summaries of other people's work.

This book is, as far as I know, the most comprehensive texbook on VLSI testing available at the moment. It is based on current trends and techniques in the field. After all, the authors are pioneers in this area. A worthy successor to Abramovici's earlier textbook, which, I think is beginning to look increasingly archaic. As a guy who's taken a course in testing by the authors (we were the guinea pigs for the book, actually)and is currently working in the VLSI testing area, I strongly recommend it to anyone looking to build strong testing fundamentals.

The most hard work in the FMS implementation is the design. But how you'll be ensure that the design have correctly designed?. By choising the apropiate tool.
And this is an object-oriented methodology (the best at now, RUP).
Now, the rest is an UML approach to the proyect success.

Roderic Castella
Univ. Bio-Bio
Chile

10 machine and 3 type part manufacturing in FMS and ýts have an 12 route and which route willbe manufacture which type part....

This book couldn't be more useless than it is. It goes through only the most basic functions of Mathcad and if you have used this program for more than a month or 2 there is going to be little here to boost your skill set. It is written more like a text book, with homework problems and everything, than a reference book.

This program is BARELY supported by Mathworks as it is and as such not a whole lot of people use it, though I love it for semiconductor work due to pretty print. There aren't alot of books out there on Mathcad so good luck struggling through the more complex tasks in Mathcad because this book won't help you much.

This book does a nice job of filling in where the built-in help of Mathcad falls short, being full of examples and explanations. At $41, it's a bit pricey, though. The evaluation disk is good for 120 days, long enough so the user will know whether or not the program is worth buying at the commercial level.

As for the program, Mathcad does a fine job if units based, what-you-see-is-what-you-get documentation is needed. For instance, it beats the heck out of using Excel, as "pretty print" typeset math is easily inserted, along with superb plotting. Documents made with it are professional looking and all calculations are easily shown with textbook quality fonts.

However, the program is lacking in symbolic commands. The most glaring of these is the lack of a symbolic differential equation solver. The symbolic capability of Mathcad comes from a subset of the Maple kernel. Why the folks at Mathcad decided not to include the dsolve() command from Maple is puzzling. Other good math programs, Derive, Maple, Mathematica, Mupad... have both numeric and symbolic differential equation solvers.

The book seems to have a lot of information, but it does not always make it clear what it is talking about. It could use more text driven images.

I have worked on both Microstation and Autocad since 1981. However,for the last 7 years I have been involed with Autocad only and this book supplied answers to questions that I had and brought me up to speed on the use of Microstation V8.

The book is written in a clear and clean mathematical language. It offers an excelent introduction into both subjects - projective geometry and NURBS. It would be great if, in addition to the basic exercises, the book would also contain more advanced problems. Evidently this book is not for programmers or CAD users looking for a reference book on practical algorithms or applications of NURBS. But it is an excellent starting point for learning the mathematical foundations of NURBS.

I have never seen projective geometry before and the explanation of the basics is very good, in the beggining. The standard quickly drops, some key terms are introduced with scant or no detail and then used heavily in subsequent sections and derivations. Maybe this book would be effective if it were covered in lectures and tutorials, unfortunately I don't have that luxury.

Este libro, es demasiado teorico.
Esperaba algo con ejemplos mas practicos y detallados sobre la visualizacion de grandes proyectos de software.
Sirve como punto de partida de alguien que este interesado en la materia, para seguir estudiando la materia, pero no para una aplicacion rapida de lo ahi conversado.

The previous reviewer (in Spanish) criticizes the book for being too theoretical and not having practical examples with details about visualizing large projects. They state that it is a starting point for someone interested in studying the subject, but not as a quick start for visualization. This is not surprising.

The description on the back cover refers to this book as "the first textbook on software visualization", which "targets both students and teachers in computer science". It further states that it is written for graduate students and researchers, "as it will provide a broad and systematic overview of the area including many pointers to tools available today".

In essence, such a review is like going to an Italian restaurant, then disparaging the food because you really wanted Mexican instead. It's not fair to the author or future readers.



The author does a phenomenal job of covering a very broad topic exactly as he intends to. The writing style is brief and informative, and the organization is excellent. The book is broken down into coherent sections that address specific methodologies that exist (or have existed) in this field. To wit, here is a summary of the chapter contents:

1. Introduction
Definition and explanation on software visualization, taxonomies and surveys, etc.
2. Visualization Basics
Basics of human perception and cognition, graphical representations, techniques, and metaphors.
3. Static Program Visualization
Observing properties such as program architecture, control flow, data flow, etc.
4. Dynamic Program Visualization
Visualizing runtime data, including algorithm animation and visual debugging.
5. Visualizing the Evolution of Software Systems
Visualizing how software structure, coupling, etc. evolve over time.
6. Evaluation
Quantitative and qualitative evaluations of various methods, plus empirical results.
7. Conclusions
Summaries, resources for further reading, and though on the future of visualization.

As a Master's student in Computer Science researching Software Visualization, this book is an invaluable resource. It covers virtually all of the seminal works and major ideas that have influenced the field in its short history. The author certainly provides abundant resources for the reader to find the individual tools, and if they are difficult to comprehend or use, the tool is to blame, not the author.

I highly recommend the book as a reference for the theory, history, and progress in the field of Software Visualization.

I was pretty disappointed with all the fictional elements of this book. There was an unbelievable plot, terrible dialogue, and characters that never develop or interest the reader. It would have been less stars but I lived in Bologna for a year and I have weakness for anything of the kind.

I'm not an avid reader of Grisham's - I might have read a couple of his early books in high school - so I can't really measure this against previous work. As a suspense/thriller type book, it's fine as far as it goes. The plot isn't terribly complicated and it is difficult to get very involved...at the end of the book, I was left with a feeling of, well, not much. Still, it is a fun read and has inspired me to visit Bologna!

This is the only John Grisham book I have read, and I was very disappointed.
Basically, the plot takes the standard ingredients of a spy novel (foreign countries, powerful Washington players with hidden motives, secrecy, scary technology, etc.) and throws them in a bowl, expecting a great thriller to automatically come out. The plot keeps hinting at intrigues, keeps building up to a big climax, but never reaches it.
For instance (spoiler alert, but it shouldn't matter because I don't recommend the book to anyone), it introduces the character of this great Chinese assassin, builds him up to be the deadliest, most effective assassin in the world, shows him closing in on the target, and then -- nothing. He's completely dropped with no explanation!
I actually liked the whole sub-plot of the protagonist having to learn Italian in a hurry. But it was all for nothing, because he never had to use it in the end. Use that in another book, it would be great!
This book was a waste of time! I'll give Grisham another try, with something more well-liked by his fans, but for anyone considering this book, I wouldn't recommend it at all.

Joel Backman is "the Broker"--a Washington power broker-lobbyist. Then his empire collapses when a deal collapses involving a hacked spy satellite that nobody acknowledges, and Backman ends up in jail, broke.

Six years later, he's pardoned by a lame duck President, and whisked away to Italy by the CIA. Everyone's after him, including the CIA, though they're more interesting in finding out who kills him than in either killing him themselves or keeping him safe.

So Backman is completely out of his element, under constant surveillance, and kept deliberately short of money and paperwork so he can't run far, even if he tries. But he didn't get to be "the Broker" by being stupid, either.

This was a fairly low-key suspense book, but I enjoyed the transformation from wealthy cold-hearted power broker to someone who's dependent on others for everything, and who's learning to reevaluate his priorities. It was also quite lovely to revisit Italy.

Not everything John Grisham writes is a winner. Remember 'The Brethren' about some highly unlikely judges in jail? And 'The Testament' was also a clunker. But basically Grisham is a safe bet, with a good tale, well told and the usual young and struggling Mississippi lawyer hero who appears under different names but always gets justice in the end. Well, forget all that. Here, our hero lives in Italy and he's not really a hero at all. But he's a hell of a lot nicer than the guys who are after him.

The Broker is a lot of fun. It's a just a great read - pick it up and whizz through it. It's not great literature, but it is Grisham doing what he does best - producing an intriguing plot, credible characters and a setting spiced with real detail that comes from knowing the location well. I liked it and I think you will.