Customer Reviews

AutoCAD 2005 For Dummies

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is guaranteed to make you an AutoCAD smarty! I teach AutoCAD courses and I'm recommending this book to students for its step-by-step approach; clear organization prioritizing the information between essential and advanced tips or warnings, etc.; helpful and abundant graphics and screen shots; advice that could only come from professional experience, letting us know what is the best way to use this software, instead of just hurling every possible method at us without any guidance; coverage of drafting, design, and project management issues related to the software; coverage of the fun stuff like 3D, etc. And best of all, the book has a great sense of humor! Written in a warm, conversational tone, with humorous as well as frank commentary, this book will make you realize that you are being guided by a real person who is giving you the inside story on how we really use AutoCAD day to day in the workplace.

When I make a decision about whether to buy a book, I look through it to see if there is enough useful information to be worth my time and money. Here are some of my impressions of this book.

AutoCAD is one of the most complex and powerful programs I have ever seen. Middlebrook is clearly very knowledgeable, but remembers what it's like to be a beginner and is able to write from the point of view of someone who is poking the buttons in this program for the first time. There are often several ways to do things with AutoCAD and it was great to see tips about the easiest way for a novice to do them. For instance, this is the only place I have seen a concise list of steps for producing a plot.

Another thing I enjoyed about the book is the perspective. In the first part of the book there is some historical perspective of CAD in general which is helpful if your trying to decide what cad program to invest your time and money in or whether it's time to upgrade to the latest version of AutoCAD. In later parts of the book that gets into the nuts and bolts, you not only see how to do particular things with the program, you come away with a sense of why the program works the way it does.

He also writes from a non-AutoDesk point of view. I got the feeling that I was getting good information rather than the company line as well as some tips that I wouldn't expect to find in the program manuals or the online help.

It's very readable, which is a rare thing considering the technical subject. There is a sense of humor and it is a pleasure to read. I wouldn't want to try and learn or use this program without the manuals, but I wouldn't want to try it without this book either and a decision about buying this book was pretty easy.

I bought this book after 2 years of not using AutoCAD from a very basic training I had. I found this book to be extremely helpful, and the writing style is really good as to not make the book a total bore, which happens with most others.
I seriously recommend this book.

This represents a book for the very beginner to the AutoCAD 2005 program. Assuming zero knowledge, you can at least draw lines and dimension simple projects after reading the book. After reading, I needed to purchase an AutoCAD Bible to progress to a more useful stage. I then passed the book on to another beginner student.

I would recommend buying the more detailed book initially.

I'm a beginning AutoCAD user, so you can take my comments as you wish. After reading this book, I felt that I VAGUELY knew what AutoCAD was about. As an active-learner, this book fell WAY short. It gives you description after description of what features are included in AutoCAD, with VERY LITTLE, if any, exercises to test the reading just completed. Honestly, if an AutoCAD book has anything less than 600 pages, I'd think twice about getting it. (Think of Noam Chomsky. There's NO WAY he would be able to fully explain, or complete a full argument of, say, US Imperialism in 10 minutes on an NBC segment). While I basically understood what, for example, a line or an arc was, in no way, after reading this book, was I able to put together a tree-house or a detailed cabinet section. After I completed this book, I went directly to the AutoCAD 2005 Bible. THAT book is how you should write an AutoCAD book. It gives you the lingo, in lay-man's terms, and then immediately follows with examples of how to do what she just told you. She (the author) gets the formula just right. Though I'm barely beginning with AutoCAD, my gut feeling is that this book should be a desk reference for Advanced users, NOT Beginners/Dummies. Note: In one section, the author describes how to multiply one number by another (more or less). If you have trouble doing a task such as this, reconsider AutoCAD or prepare for some looooooooooooooooong nights. Don't let AutoCAD for Dummies fool you. You have to have a good amount of intelligence, in my opinion, to figure this stuff out.

I personally did not like this book. It has been years, maybe 5, to be exact, since I worked in AutoCad. So I was hoping that I could get this book as a refresher course. NOT!
I was looking for something that served as a quick reference, but it did not. There were not many details about what I was looking for. This book just did not work for me.
I have puchased the AutoCad Bible, I will let you know how this one is......

I love the "for Dummies" books....they're written well, they're easy to understand AND the best bonus written with some humor!

The Title is misleading.
This book is for everyone, not just dummies.
I got this book and Ellen Finklestiens as refreshers not having used AutoCAD in over 5 years.
Walking through the AutoCAD bible helped a lot but having this one next to me for quick reference made everything a lot easier

This book is a great reference book. The book highlights all the information worth knowing in a compact form. The only thing that did not make this book perfect is that it did not come with a tutorial on how to do some of the demonstration. Still a great book worth buying even if you are just starting autocad.