CAD and CAM Books

It's a great book for school people, but not for an engineer.

Examples are easy to follow. The first chapters are almost spoon-fed. However organization is whack. The book is designed to be used from cover to cover - no skipping chapters. The index is horrible. In most texts, topics are arranged by chapter in the CONTENTS section and all topics are arranged by alpha order in the INDEX. In this book, it's inconvenient to lookup "model editing" for example. One has to look in each chapter to find which takes a lot more time than scanning an alphabetical listing.

At best a cursory introduction to AutoLISP. It lacks depth. Has no reference tables for AutoLISP functions, group codes, system variables or the like which would have made the book useful as a manual. Although Release 14 is mentioned I don't think had been updated for the new features. The fact that the author illustrates his examples using the edlin editor (an obsolete DOS 3.3 editor)says it all.

I would not recommend this book to those who are new to AutoLISP. Of the 200 pages in the book, only 39 were dedicated to "basic" AutoLISP programming. The rest of the book covered advanced techniques and the last third of the book was designed for the City & Guilds AutoLISP Programming Certificate, complete with assignments and tests. It did not cover the "basics" of AutoLISP and gave little or no explaination as to the theories and logic behind the steps involved. It was a "learn by example" approach, however, the examples were not always adequately explained and were sometimes exceedingly complex. As a beginner I gained very little from the book, but those more familiar with AutoLISP may find it to be a worthwhile purchase.

First let me say that I found the book very clearly written and that I gained some valuable information from reading it. However, I was disappointed by the amateurish layout and binding for such an expensive book. Furthermore, the book was not nearly as in depth as I would have liked; it was more of an overview of potential issues, providing me a springboard for further reflection before implementation.

The book struck me as more of a thesis than a finished work. It was printed double-spaced in 12-point type in typical term paper fashion. In fact, if this book were to be professionally laid out, it would only be about 80 pages, not 189. There are no illustrations or diagrams and the method employed for differentiating menu commands from body text is awkward at best. Moreover, the cover is simply white card stock with plain text and a lame grayscale logo.

In comparison, I also purchased "Design Modeling with Pro/ENGINEER (Release 20)" By James Bolluyt (ISBN: 1887503676) at the same time I purchased this book. It is also a very inexpensively bound book with a cover made of plain white card stock. However, it only cost $50, it has a more attractive cover design, and it is laid out more professionally with single spaced text, facing pages, proper margins, and clear differentiation between body text and menu commands and other sample data. The ironic thing is that both of these books are by the same publisher.

I understand that this book is geared primarily at engineers, but even engineers deserve a little better. The over riding factor, and the reason I am writing this review, is that when I told my boss I spent $90 dollars on this book he looked at me like I was nuts.

Regarding the actual content of the book, I appreciated the emphasis that was placed on creating modeling and drafting standards as a means for maximizing the effectiveness of Pro/Engineer. I also found the section that discussed the differences and implications of Top Down and Bottom Up design to be interesting. The coverage of these topics in this book was a bit too general though. The book sparked my interest on these topics and made me realize the emphasis that should be placed on these issues as we implement Pro/Engineer. However, I feel that the book merely skimmed the surface of these issues. I would have liked to see two or three case studies for each issue. Each case study would detail how a particular company addresses these issues and what the advantages and disadvantages of their solution are. Basically, rather than merely pointing out potential pitfalls, the book needs to make a greater effort to offer possible solutions.

As a new Pro/E user and a self proclaimed ad-hoc administrator for the software I was very interested in this book. The software is not easy to configure and PTC does not provide good documentation. While reading the book description I thought to myself, wow, finally. Unfortunately when the book arrived I was sorely dissapointed. On first impression I was apalled to see that it was not really a book but produced on a copy machine and loosely bound by what looked like the cheapest technique that Kinko's had to offer. The thing was listed at 180+ pages but there was no mention that that was a twelve point font and double spaced. This was not a book but looked more like a college term paper, and it would have not even earned a passing grade. On to content. I read the entire thing, cover to cover, in about 15 minutes. It was totally lacking of content of any sort. It was basically a Cliff's notes version of the preface of the PTC manual. The online review at Amazon, written by the author, stated it was a must-have for any Pro/E administrator. It instead was devoid of any detail and when it came time to focus on any facts, the author simply states that you must tell a consultant to do these complicated tasks. I understand that the scope of the book was not tutorial in nature, but come on, don't skirt every single issue. To bring this to an end. To the author I would say, you should be ashamed for passing this off as an actual book. The utter lack of content was an enormous dissapointment. The quality of the print, I mean Xerox, was disgusting for any book.

When I buy a book like this I am really looking for a How to book.
I want tutorials set up in a logical format.
This book is a little too scattered for my taste.

Having gone through this book with a fine-toothed comb I noted a very high incidence of errors...specifically with the exercises! The CD which came with the book did NOT correspond to what was written in the book! It seems that Online Press was very sloppy with their editing of this book. My recommendation would be to get "MicroStation 3D by Example" Author is Noel Addison. Excellent.

The material in the book is pretty straight forward. It introduces you to Autocad 2005 and walks you through the procedures pretty good. As far as I got! That's the good. The bad was because I got the ebook version I had to keep jumping back and forth between Adobe Acrobat Reader and Autocad when I had questions. Now the UGLY!! If your computer crashes. You've lost your book. Or at least the security key to read it. The book is still on my D drive, but apearently the security key to view it was stored somewhere on C drive, which crashed, and it is now gone, and the ebook is worthless. And by the way, don't think about printing it out. It's well over 700 pages and the security key only allows 30 pages to print a month. Lets see; how many years is that.....?

Dissapointed! the book does not cover 3D commands, which are actually the main strength of Autocad 2007 version!..

I purchased this book as an AutoCAD beginner, with an interest in architectural drafting. I found the book to be a comprehensive reference book, but not very useful as a learning tool.

The explanations of the commands are often so succint that they lack context. For example, the concept of viewports, which is important, complicated and not very intuitive, is defined and contextualized in two sentences: "A viewport is a rectangular part of the graphics area of the screen. Viewports can be used in different ways and for different purposes." Two purposes are then offered: "The first reason to create viewports and divide the display screen into a number of parts is to create a model or layout...The second purpose is to have different parts or different views of your drawing in different viewports."

This explanation is followed by 18 pages of technically dense procedures for how to create and manipulate viewports, but no more explanation of when and why they are used.

For me as a beginner, this was not very helpful.

A second noteworthy consideration is the strong bias towards mechanical drafting; the architectural examples were rare and seemed to be afterthoughts.

The only book that is currently available in the market and focuses on AutoCAD customization is the one written by Mr. Tickoo. The idea of writing such a book is really good, but unfortunately the book is not what readers are looking for.

- It covers some irrelevant topics such as AutoCAD Calculator, Template Files, and Database Connectivity

- The book is old fashioned. It is written for older versions of AutoCAD and not updated for latest versions properly. You can refer to the chapter that covers Slide Shows to get what I mean.

- The book does not cover important topics such as metric-english variaties in AutoCAD

- The chapters discussing Programming languages are superficial and it seems they exist just to increase the size of the book. Please refer to chapters covering VBA and VLISP

Unfortunately there is no other choices for AutoCAD users but if there was a better resource I wouldn't buy this book at all.

This is a CD that can run alongside CADKEY 20+ but it is not designed to interface with it. I am using CADKEY ver. 20.3 the latest and greatest version.

I found the presentation mechanism to be poor at best. The interface is the Microsoft Explorer presented with Windows Media.

Once the individual tutorials start the full screen option (which is recommended) does not fill the screen. (It overfills the screen) This causes you to have to scamper around with the horizontal and vertical scroll keys to attempt to see which icon or menu item is being selected by the presenter. The script appears to be done off the cuff, the speaker being prompted by his knowledge of the program and not by some program design to get the pertinent information out to you.

The program bills itself as an intro to the new CADKEY 20+ release but spends about half of its time on matters that are either not new or can be figured out easily enough.

Some functions just plain do not work as described. Other attempts at demonstration (remember this is supposed to be new) assume you know something that is not given on the screen.

Mr. Walt has been the author of many books on CADKEY. I have several of them, but his style is considerably oppressive to the student. (on the subject of hot keys it's either "my way or the highway") But the largest complaint I have with his attempt at teaching (he know an awful lot of information) is he tells you what HE knows and not what YOU as a student needs to know. There is a wide rift between the two. None of his works (even the elementary ones) have what I would call great continuity from beginning to end, but this one is especially jumpy and disconnected.

The real problem is that if you do not buy Dr. Walt's books/CD's there is no other alternative for paced self-study of the subject. Were it not for the long counseling sessions (and heavy medication like TUMS antacid) by my local VAR representative I would be in total LA LA land on this program.

Also it must be stated here that I am NOT well versed on the nuances of ANY drawing/drafting/3D program, but these programs are supposed to bring you up to minimum speed. This one just puts you out on the highway in a Yugo at 75 mph and hopes that you will absorb some "rubber" as you are pummeled by oncoming traffic.

Far too little for far too much money.