Customer Reviews

Beginner's Guide to SolidWorks 2007

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I received a free instructor evaluation copy of this book. I was expecting more from an author who is an Authorized SolidWorks trainer. The book only addresses the basic fundamentals of SolidWorks, and reads mostly like the SolidWorks Help section which is provided free with the software. The Drawing section: No configurations, design tables, Custom Properties, Task Pane, Annotation Notes,etc. and Assembly sections: No SmartMates, very few standard Standard Mates, no Parent/Child relations, Smart Fastners, InContext, etc. are very weak with few and simple examples.

I do agree with a few reviewers on his 2006 book, which looks the same as his 2007 book. "Once a skill is covered in the book, the author assumes that the reader now knows how to do that task." This is not good in a classroom environment. At 200 pages, there is about 150 pages that provides information. This is not the book for me.

Beginners beware!

This title will lead you to believe it is for beginners, but really it isn't. I had zero knowledge of Solidworks when I got this manual hoping it would give me a good start, but found myself scratching my head in every other operation.

Vital information is left out leaving the student on his own trying to find out how to activate functions in order to move forward. On average it took an hour or more to figure out operations that should take a few seconds, if the instructor would have given complete instructions.

Perhaps I understand the program better now, but it was extremely frustration trying to figure it out on my own, which is why I purchased the manual in the first place. All in all many, many hours of the student time are wasted because of a lack of good instruction. The instructor should evaluate his writing by letting students with NO experience in the program critique the book and its problems.