Customer Reviews

Simplified Engineering for Architects and Builders

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This book explains the fundamentals of structural analysis (mainly statically determinate structures) and then goes on to the design fundamentals for different materials (wood, steel, concrete and masonry) followed by the design of the structural system for a building. I first used an earlier edition of this book when studying for my undergraduate degree as an introductory book before reading the course texts. The present edition maintains the "easy to understand" explanations of the earlier edition while adding new materials, expanding other sections and updating the design methods in line with the building codes. Emphasis is placed on understanding, the explanations given are very clear and there are numerous worked examples to illustrate the principles. The book is excellent for the beginner first getting used to structural analysis and design or for the practising engineer who has not touched structures for a while and wants to refresh his memory. However this book is only the first step and the undergraduate or practising engineer would do well to follow up on this with other more specialised books like Wang and Salmon's "Reinforced Concrete Design", Salmon and Johnson's "Steel structures: Design and behaviour", or Halperin and Bible's "Principles of Timber Design for Architects and Builders".

The book's title claims to be simplified engineering for architects and builders, members of the latter group often having no engineering training. As such, I expected the book to cover key structural and other building engineering issues in engineering terms in an appropriate tutorial format. Instead, the book is a collection of reference materials, distilled down. I majored in EE in college and took several semesters of static and dynamic engineering courses, and still had problems with this book because of the lack of contextual information to the presentation. This book does not at all deliver on the goal defined by its title.

The book explains the fundamentals of structural analysis well, mainly statically determinate structures. The book also covers design fundamentals for various materials, mainly: wood, steel, concrete and masonry.

I used an earlier version of this book many years ago, as an introductory book. The book is good for the beginner.

GOOD: The book does an excellent job presenting steel concepts and is adequate in concrete.

POOR: As an instructor for structures courses for architects, this book is simply disastrous. The wood section, also, is incomplete. Errors run rampant through the book's text, examples, and problem solutions through the book. Even within the same edition, book answers can vary book to book. Furthermore, current methods are mixed with the old leading to an incorrect presentation of the subject matter. In short, this book falls far short of the reputation which preceded it.

Simplified Engineering for Architects and Engineers is a great book at first glance but once you actually start to go through the problems that they have at the end of each chapter, there are so many errors! We used this book in one of our classes and our class found an average of 2 errors every week. If you don't know exactly what you are doing for each problem then you will have a hard time figuring out how to actually figure things out! I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone.

This book is helpful in understanding the process of sizing materials for construction, but is poorly written and riddled with errors. We struggled with it in the classroom.

One of the best reference books I own. Teaches the reader how to custom design themselves, the structural components (beams, girders, columns, footings, etc - be it wood, steel or concrete) needed to create a strong, safe and long lasting structure.

This is not a simplified treatment of the subject. I have a graduate degree in engineering and needed by background in Structures to understand it. I would not recommend it to builders without an engineering or architectural background.

Yo soy ingeniero civil de Mexico. Este libro esta ayudandome mucho. Pero estoy esperando este libro en la version en espanol. Amazon esta tratando de encontrarlo.

There is so much missing from this book, its hard to know where to start. A basic example is in the section that talks about design methods and more specifically the sub section that discusses strength design (LRFD). The author goes on to explain "a" design method, but unless you know what he is talking about there isn't anything in the text that would let you know exactly what design method is being explained. He doesn't even tell you what LRFD stands for (Load and Resistance Factor Design). It seems that there was a rush to get this to print and not enough time spent on the editing.