Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire Tutorial and Multimedia CD [Paperback]

Roger Toogood (Author), Jack Zecher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2003

This tutorial style introduction to Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire will be valuable to both the new and the experienced Pro/ENGINEER user. For the new user this book offers eleven tutorial style lessons that cover program operation, part creation, modeling utilities, creating engineering drawings, and creating assemblies and assembly drawings. The experienced Pro/ENGINEER user will find the lessons as a quick means of becoming familiar with the many new features contained in Wildfire. This book is accompanied by a CD that contains a complete audio/visual presentation of all the tutorial lessons contained in the book. The CD gives the Pro/ENGINEER user the opportunity to get a feel for how Wildfire works.

Product Details

• Paperback: 290 pages
• Publisher: Schroff Development Corp (May 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585031135
• ISBN-13: 978-1585031139
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,967,129 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Design Software Tutorial Book Trials & Tribulations, January 24, 2004

By 

E. McLean (London, U.K.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire Tutorial and Multimedia CD (Paperback)

Problems. Problems. Problems.

I've not long completed lesson 6 of 11 chapters of this book and I have to write I am not impressed.

Errors in this book are too numerous and far from acceptable especially when one considers the price paid.!

Lesson 6, a task which involves producing a disc clamp part for a project which is intended to culminate into a vice assembly was found to be totally impossible to produce based on the information given both pictorially and dimensionally.

Male and female cone locators have no dimension location. They just float about a common axis.

Pockets are not dimensionally defined by form or location. What happened to the radiuses and depth?

In the first pictorial view, there are two webbed or cut rounded like forms within a revolved concentric recess that conflict with an adjacent view depicting its opposite side.

In the initial view one wonders if they could be through cuts. Then when one looks at the proceeding view one wonders if they are in fact webs since no through cuts are shown.

However, my final interpretation has resulted in these being similar through cuts as a result of a half cylindrically revolved recess, intended to mate and secure to a shaft (incidentally, this lacked a centre line axis to define position and had to be assumed central, based on neighbouring features).

I believe a section view is needed here and perhaps a more consistent drawing form design intent. Ideally two pictorial views supported by 3rd angle elevation views to help reduce the dimensional clutter and convey the form more accurately and clearly. I had to call on judgement and design intuition to complete this to a credible standard.

This is shoddy and totally unacceptable, since this task is essential for completion of the final vice assembly task. Confidence is not inspired it is merely weakened. I now ask myself, "Are there going to be further omissions fudges and errors?"

There is no substitute for correctly presented and communicated drawings (as the author acknowledges to a degree somewhere in his text), ideally to BS308 standard or similarly recognised drawing standard (for example adhering to the use of a common datum/s for dimensions, which seems to be lacking here).

In terms of a complete training package, apart from needing huge reserves of patience and time, one cannot effectively get through this book without reference to its companion CD. Its use is essential (especially for partially assisting with navigating legacy Pro-Engineer menu features, which I still find somewhat irksome since there is no info on how to respond when one gets into an odd seemingly inescapable command `wont cancel' kind of loop).

This aspect of the software is far from intuitive. It does not act or respond to user inputs in ways the unfamiliar would expect and needs explanation. The author seems to have hoped or assumed that either the reader has previous exposure to an earlier version/s of Pro-Engineer - which I don't - or that a suitable software upgrade at further expense to the reader should patch this instructional omission. Again this is not good enough!

Looking back, beware of chapter 3 exercise task 4. The 'Loop' Sketcher command was needed here to eliminate what was a by-product of a chamfer profile (your approach might be different to mine). The 'loop' command was not mentioned in this chapter nor do I recall in previous ones. Took way to long to find it and identify its use. Trial and error was called upon to achieve it.

Based on my progress to date, I believe most uninitiated users of Pro-Engineer reliant on this tutorial as their primary source of instruction would need at least 'three' months to complete it successfully, without additional guidance support either by means of another book/CD combo or a knowledgeable Pro-Engineer tutor to help clarify and fill in the gaps and I think that's quite optimistic.

I'm in search of another book!

Views and experiences expressed by a practicing design engineer.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Poor quality, March 2, 2004

By 

A. Kalbag "Myth_killer" (Pullman, WA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire Tutorial and Multimedia CD (Paperback)

The book is just bad. Most exercises have no dimensions on them so you are really estimating dimensions and remembering them as u go along developing the part. This is OK with simple parts but with complex parts it would be nice to have dimensions. With dimensions one can compare the the part with the pictorial provided in the book - that gives the user an idea whether he/she modelled the part right. Sometimes it is possible to do the wrong thing and still get something that looks similar but is wrong. Dimensions quantize the end result and the user can know for SURE if the work done was right. In CAD its either a 100% right or 100% wrong especially if the error is in a key feature that is going to be mated with another part.
Even the few exercises which have dimensions are confusing. Some dimensions are vague and the user can misunderstand a dimension and only after working halfway does one realise that the part does not work! This is due to poor dimensioning and even poorer graphic quality of the book.
All this would still be OK if the book did a good job in letting you know how to use Pro/E. It does not. Its too wordy, vague, explaining things in a roundabout manner. How about having 2 pages to explain a concept like mirroring. Something which should take no more than 1 paragraph. They should separate the how-to-do-it and what-it-means aspects of the software. Its ludicrous to expect someone to read 3-4 pages to get to know something simple like modifying feature dimensions or setting references.
Lastly I have had this book for 1 month and I use all books very carefully yet the spine is coming unglued. I will be happy if the book lasts the rest of the semester.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire Tutorial, April 1, 2008

By 

Paul C. Douglas (North Carolina) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire Tutorial and Multimedia CD (Paperback)

Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire Tutorial and no Multimedia CD. I kinda wish I had a copy of the CD but over all it seems to be a pretty good book so far.