CAD and CAM Books

I purchased a book from Randy a few years ago, "Parametric Modeling with Autodesk Inventor R11" when I was using Inventor. It was a good book. My company made the move to SolidWorks and I needed a book to learn and understand the command structure and interface.

The book is a big disappointment. Randy does back and forward using Inventor and SolidWorks terms and terminology. This is confusing to a new SolidWorks user. Let me state what is wrong with this book vs. what is right. There is no 3D Sketching, little or no information on loft, sweep, and revolve features, no detail information on top-down or bottom-up assembly, no Smart mates or toolbox components, no mechanical mates or advance mates. The drawing / part sections do not address dimXpert, importing annotations, etc and does a very poor job on explaining anything except the simplest views. Randy, how do you even apply the 3D drawing view tool within a view? System and document property setting are mainly passed by. He uses the same models from his inventor book.

I also noticed from the SolidWorks help screens, some of his pictures and commands are not updated for 2008. This is why I purchased the 2008 book, not the 2007 book.

This book is so dated that I am not sure that you could get the examples to compile. Additionally the book was not easy to use or read even during it's time. I had hoped for a book explaining how to create Virtual Worlds, but instead I got a treatise on using one particular program to create boxes on an empty plane.

This book 1. lacks samples; 2. lacks detailed explainations to the existing examples in this book; 3. has no answer keys to help students to try the exercises themselves. More reading of this book, more confussing.

Book focused on old (1993) technologies and has only a few pages devoted to the real RPD requirement - an organizational support system. A waste of time and money.

This book is horribly unorganized, and full of typographical and grammatical errors. The basic premise is good--you are guided through a complete project from start to finish. Each subsequent exercise builds from the previous. However, Stine's instructions are inconsistent. Sometimes he's point by point; other times he leaves you searching the book--forward and backward--for information necessary to complete the task. Sometimes it doesn't exist! Often he falls into the trap of using jargon that beginners haven't been exposed to, and the book has no glossary for reference, and a very weak index. Stine's intentions are good. I blame the editors for letting his manuscript hit the printers.