Customer Reviews

SolidWorks Surfacing and Complex Shape Modeling Bible

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is the only book like it I have found available anywhere for SolidWorks. It is better than the surfacing book for Rhino because of the detail of data. What I like most about this book is that it explains why things work or even why they don't work. This is important for real users. Its definitely not a beginners book, but I've been using SW for about 3 years, having used Pro/ENGINEER in another job for several years, and all of the concepts were understandable. The book shows the strengths and flaws of SolidWorks for surfacing work. This book is in color with good quality paper, better than the Solidworks 2009 Bible by the same author (black and white and printed on thin paper).

One thing I found interesting was that it is grouped into different sections,one for just explaining features, another for showing examples of what features can do, and the last section for showing general techniques consisting of several features, like how to make smooth end caps, or fading a sharp edge into a smooth face, and some wacky stuff too. It does a good job of showing a wide range of techniques.

I think if you really do work like this, you will learn much from this book. If you are a casual SolidWorks user, it may be too much work to understand it.

I believe this to be the best SolidWorks book for advanced part modeling currently available on the market. This is a good and informative book aimed at the intermediate/expert SolidWorks user.

A good understanding of SolidWorks is required to get the most from this book.

The book covers all the advanced features available in SolidWorks in detail and where it can it tells you where you would use a particular feature.

The title is self explanatory. This book is primarily aimed at people that do consumer product design where appearance and smooth surfaces are required.

The only reason I gave this book 4 stars is because I believe there is always room to make things better. That said, this is my best SolidWorks book yet.

The book is perfect for small companies or individual users that need training on surfacing but don't have the resources for classroom time. The book covers all of the tools available and then goes into the sections that really help, actual modeling techniques. The author goes through several curvy models and shares his thought processes for picking the best modeling approaches. Extremely helpful for those who aren't sure where to start.
On the down side, the same companies or individuals who don't have the resources for classroom time are also likely not able to afford to continually upgrade. And so if they have Solidworks 2007 or earlier then the samples files, (which are 2008), cannot be used. This puts a big damper on the learning potential. Sample files are one of the best ways to study modeling techniques, but in this case they are out of reach for a potentially large group. It should not be a surprise to the author that not everyone upgrades. In fact his September 23, 2008 blog entry (written well after the book came out) has this in it - "I still have projects in 2007. I get rare projects in 2008, and I've already done several projects in 2009."
So, good job on the book. Well written and a fun read in sections. But not being able to take advantage of the sample files hurts.

If you are expecting a step by step tutorial you should look elsewhere. I purchased this book as a supplement to the SolidWorks help files and in that regard it is most excellent. It explains quite well what the built in help function utterly fails to. This book mostly provides a description of what the tools actually do in theoretical terms and then gives some basic guidelines for when to use what. If you are expecting cold hard examples, look elsewhere, and I would be surprised if you found them anywhere because there are nearly limitless ways to create surfaces and infinite surfaces that can be created.

This is book is a must-have for the serious SolidWorks student. The topics covered represent basics and advanced concepts that are applicable to any version of the program. The surfacing tools, themselves, really havn't changed all that much for a very long time. It's all about understanding the basics and developing your own workflows.

This book is not as good as the author's "bible" in that this one does not have as many step by step tutorials. This one covers Solidworks 2008 and 2007 mostly. I was impressed with the author's bible book so I ordered this one too. If he added more tutorials instead of writing mostly theory and details of Surfacing it would be easier too learn. The print quality of the book with colored images is very good. It did not come with a cd of tutorial files and the book in pdf format. You are told to visit website for tutorial files. So I recommend the book but it is not for beginners.

Now this is a book for anyone that needs in-depth and accurate information on SW Surfacing. Excellent book. As one reviewer state; "it's refreshing to read a book on the subject that is so useful and also a lot of fun!" I totally agree with this statement...

There's probably a newer version now that it's almost 2011, but the concepts covered here are general, so if you can get a copy of this on the cheap, do it. It's helped my SolidWorks modeling skills quite a bit, and it's well written, with valid criticisms of SolidWorks shortcomings (in other words it's not a sales pitch like the tutorials put out by SolidWorks).

This book is what you always dreamed "Help" should be. Just about every other page of this surfacing bible has an observation or tip that is worth the price of the book all by itself. I've been modeling in CAD for 20 years, five of it in SolidWorks. SolidWorks is my favorite CAD tool, but every system has its limitations, and these are never discussed in the "Help." Matt Lombard frankly discussions these limitations without sounding critical of the software. And the usual training courses, unless they are very expensive, rarely suggest many strategies, different ways to orchestrate all of these wonderful tools to get professional results, which are vital because a single surfacing strategy will not always produce the desired results. Matt is all about strategies and evaluates numerous strategies in each tutorial. Add to that clear color illustrations, tight prose, free downloads of all of his models, and I have a book that I enjoyed studying and will refer to over and over. (Beginners should get Matt's 2009 SolidWorks Bible and master it first.)

I have been working in SolidWorks for around ten years. In that period of time there has been a great deal of change in the program. I find that my skills are generally good, but lacking variety across all of the available SolidWorks features; so this book, along with Matt's other works have become a staple reference for me whenever I get "stumped."

Matt has approached this book with obvious first-hand and detailed understanding of both the strong and weak features of SolidWorks Surfacing aspects. You will likely find, as I did, that even the fundementals that he covers will hold some valuable recommendations and methods.

I will be keeping this book close at hand.