Customer Reviews

Mechanical Desktop 5: Parametric Modeling

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

My name is Vince Montefusco and I'm one of the top-ten Mechanical & Explosives Special Effects Supervisor and Designer within the Film & TV Industry. I've been designing gadgets & gizmos for high-end projects for 28 years.

Five years ago I learned AutoCAD 14, 2000 & 2000i and two years ago Mechanical DeskTop (MDT) 4 & 5. Pencil drafting is a thing of the past. My clients love the 3D mechanical designs.

One major thing I was missing was a good reference book until now. When I read John Wilson's book "Mechanical Deskto 5" it expanded my world of design. He's book includes comprehensive techniques that I either forgot or never learned in an easy-to-read and understand format. If yor serious about 3D Parametric Solid-based CAD design, then this book is a must read!

Thorough, easy to read, with excellent explanations. Good practical exercises. Highly recommended.

This book is ok as a supplemental command reference but as a tutorial I would give it a D-. There are only a few exercises & the drawings were created in an earlier version and saved as 2000 format. Some don't act as expected. There are also some errors that were not caught (the book appears to have been updated from an earlier release). While a beginner could re-create the drawings shown in the command examples, it would take an unacceptable amount of time. Each explanation should come with a drawing that has been pre set up for the user to practice the commands & see how they work. Only the command line version of each command is given (right click menus are also somewhat explained), with no mention of how to use a toolbar or menu bar to activate the commands! The only reason to buy this book is because it's the only one out there.

What a disappointment - this is a fairly decent book for Mechanical Desktop 5, but ALL instructions pertain to the command line prompt codes (not the toolbar).

For those of you who don't know what I'm referring to: Autocad gives you two main ways to execute commands - by typing in 8 to 10 letter codes (the old way), or by clicking on the toolbar buttons (the more user-friendly way). In some cases, you have no choice and must use the code commands, however this book makes no mention of the toolbar buttons that relate to what they're doing. Unless you are 'old school' and plan on trying to memorize hundreds of command codes, forget about this book - its no help.

This book gives a great overview of all the commands to start with parametric moddeling with mechanical desktop 5. The overview of commands is great but there's a lack of different possibilyties to acces the different commands.

This book is a good study guide for anyone to use when they are making the move from AutoCAD to Mechanical Desktop. Without an AutoCAD background though, one would really struggle. There are detailed explanations of the commands for making models of parts, parts' drawings, assemblies, and assembly scenes and drawings.
I found many commands explained in this book that weren't even mentioned in the User's Guide tutorials.
There were several typos and grammatical errors in the book, but it was not difficult to figure out what was meant.
I would like to have seen more information as to the alternate ways of invoking commands; such as Toolbars and drop-down menus.
MDT is a very complex software package with tremendous capability, but with study of the detailed explanations in this book, and practice one can learn to produce 3D solid models and drawings.
I would highly recommend this book both as a study guide and a reference manual.

This is a good book for those starting MDT. It shows pictures on almost every page and explains commands very well. The tutorials are great to get an understanding of the command. I only wish it had tutorials of every command. I would recommend it to anyone starting MDT.

Thorough, easy to read, with excellent explanations. Good practical exercises. Highly recommended.

I THOUGHT THIS BOOK WAS VERY EASY TO READ AND UNDERSTAND. IT WAS VERY HELPFUL IN WORKING WITH AND UNDERSTANDING MECHANICAL DESKTOP 5. IT WAS A GOOD BOOK AND I AM VERY SATISFIED WITH IT. I WOULD RECOMMEND IT TO ANY WHO IS LEARNING MECHANICAL DESKTOP 5.