Customer Reviews

ProENGINEER 2001 Instructor with CD ROM

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

 

 

This is an excellent Pro/E Instruction book. If you are trying to learn Pro/E and only want to buy one book, I would recommend this one. It includes a CD-ROM with all of the tutorial files, either in student or professional version (very important if you are using a student license since regular Pro/E files are unreadable).

I bought this book because of the other Amazon reviews that said the CD has files for the Student version of Pro/E, which I have. (The CD files worked quite well with my software.) Then I bought the "instructor" version because I thought there might be more discussion, more explaination and more reasoning behind what was happening in the tutorials. Turns out, that was a bad assumption. You have to be an instructor at some "certified" or "approved" or "something" (something I never did figure out!) school to get to the instructor discussions. Average Joe Person can't get to them. Guess we couldn't have the kiddies actually taking the class somewhere (maybe where Mr. Kelley teaches) getting into all the answers!The book directs you to a web site that has "errata" as a selection, but there is absolutely nothing in the errata. Don't get the impression, like I did, since I had not yet started using the book, that the errors have all been edited out, because they haven't. Errors abound, almost all of them of small enough magnitude that the average person could figure them out and proceed. I had to skip a couple lessons or problems because the instructions were unclear or the drawings incomplete. Beginners beware. That said, the book has more good things than bad, and does a fair job of describing what needs to be done and provides an outline before you actually start. I like knowing what it is that I am about to do before they start giving me instructions to "select this, click here, enter that, click done." (I just HATE having to click "done" with my mouse. Enter - or SOMETHING from the keyboard - should work as well.) Only a couple places does it say,"Do this," then after the fact state, "but only AFTER you have done this." The way I do things, I'm usually done with the "do this" and haven't read the "only AFTER" part. The discussion about configurations is somewhat shallow, but is greater depth than the other limited exposure that I have had with Pro/E manuals. The ones directly from PTC are the worst that I have ever had the displeasure of using. This one gets a 4 because I have only used the real PTC manuals before and it is way better than those. If there weren't so many errors that Mr. Kelley and/or his editors/proofreaders would be ashamed of or if the errata really did contain the corrections, I would give it a 5. I don't recommend the "Instructor" version that is about $25 more. Because of this book I am much more confident of my Pro/E abilities and am now putting Pro/E on my resume without felling like I am stretching the truth.

I have always appreciated Kelley's books because he has been using good approach of explaining a command. At some places the explanation may seem to be not enough though, but his books make sure that the reader learns most of the things. This is a good book and is recommended to all.

I've purchased approximately three other books on the subject of Pro/ENGINEER 2001 published by SDC; they can't even compare to this book. It's simple, easy to learn and follow - ideal for independent study. Well worth the money. Well done Professor Kelley!!

Best Pro/E book available. Good tutorials and exercises to review what you learn in each chapter.