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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2012
I agree with a reviewer who stated two things that stand out about this book: 1) The book instructs the reader to create something like a wall and then has the reader manipulate the creation to make a "big picture" point about the program-- without telling the reader how to create the wall. 2) The "big picture" concepts, such as organizing your work, sharing your work, and manipulating your work are presented before the book goes into details about using the program's finer points to create the work. I believe this is done because the authors assume the reader knows the basics. I am learning the basics while I read this book, and I initially figured I would use the internet to learn how to "draw a wall," when the book instructed me to do do so, without describing how. This can be done, but I didn't realize how time consuming. Why? I believe it has to do (I am still learning) with the fact that Revit is very "contextual." Depending upon where you are in the program, the tool bars, behavior of drawn items, and what a tool will do change. This is very disorienting when learning. It also makes getting online search help difficult. One can google how to draw a sphere, find step-by-step instructions, and still not be able to do it because he didn't start where the internet author started. It's like living in San Diego and asking for directions to Omaha. You will get directions, but the response will assume you live in Seattle (without telling you that the directions assume Seattle, so you think it is based on San Diego, as you asked--but you can see the roads listed in the directions don't match San Diego). This also appears to be a problem with the internal Revit help, wikihelp. It will tell you how to do something, but has to assume you are at a certain point in the program, which you probably are not. So the point is that this is not an easy book for a beginner by itself. It has a companion beginner book by the same authors, I believe, which may be the place to start. However, I am sticking just with this book for now because I am really learning the program this way...
