Dezignstuff SolidWorks Blog

Here was a little surprise. A Chinese version of the SW2007 Bible. The biggest surprise was that it was actually from my publisher, and not a bootleg. I mean the only thing I usually get from China is spam. It’s about half the size of the English version. I’ve got 4 of these things. I’ve thought of giving them out at user group meetings, or sending them to perfect strangers.

Inside, someone with SolidWorks went through and redid all my screen shots in Chinese. Wow. They didn’t do the whole book, but still it was a stunning amount of time that went into it. I wonder who made the decision to just now print the 2007 version? Does it take that long for software piracy to catch up? Sorry, I’m assuming that all copyrighted material in China is bootlegged. I wonder how a book with the name Bible on the front will go over in China?

Maybe ebay.

Well, have at it, the 2010 book is hitting the stacks at Amazon. If you’ve pre-ordered one you should be receiving it any time now. I finished writing it so long ago I’d almost forgot that it was still not out yet. I don’t have a copy yet, but authors are the last to find out, so that’s no surprise.

It took a while, but I got them to remove the kid’s bike from the cover. A stealth fighter is so much cooler than a kid’s bike. Of course every time I think they have made a bad choice, I just remember that for the first book they wanted to put a drafting table on the cover. I had to get in the way of that one. A drafting table. On the cover of a 3D modeler book. Maybe I was just blind to the humor in irony. Maybe I was afraid that irony doesn’t sell very well.

And maybe I need to mention that an actual F-117 nighthawk does not come with this book. The real Nighthawk is $45 million, sold separately, and you have to have a note of good behavior from your supervisor just to get in the line to buy one even if you’ve got the bucks. So no, I can’t hand them out.

Nor is there a SolidWorks model of the F-117 Nighthawk or any other variation of capitalization thereof. Sorry. I did model an F-117 nightHawk for this blog. If you ask real nice I might loan it to you for a while. Or you could make your own. Or you could just download one from some website and say you did it. If you buy the 2010 book and get really bent out of shape by the fact that I only put an f-117 on the cover and didn’t include a real one, a toy one or a SW model of one, drop me a line and I’ll arrange a fly-over for your neighborhood. Sorry, this is not a supersonic jet, so no window smashing sonic booms. You’ll have to wait for the SR-71 Blackbird for that…

Oh, and now would be a good time to suggest something to put on the cover of the SolidWorks Cloud Bible. Maybe a hot air balloon, or an equivalent, such as Al Dean’s head.

Anyway. Oh, yes, I had that announcement that I had 6 2009 books left and was selling them on eBay. When you move, stuff gets crazy, and I have moved twice in the last year. Tonight, Kim just unpacked 8 more books that were stowed away in some dusty corner. So. If you’re nostalgic, or have vowed never to move to 2010 or whatever reason you might have, I have 8 more 2009 Bibles for sale at a bargain on eBay. They have the kid’s bike on the cover, but again, do not actually come with a kid’s bike or a model of a kid’s bike. Nor does it come with a tutorial for how to make a kid’s bike. I know. What use is it then?

If you need to know how to model a lamp, this is the wrong book. For anything else, though, it should get you through. Remember, this is not a tutorial. All a tutorial does is teach you to do one thing. If all you need to know is one thing, then a tutorial might be the right choice for you. Unfortunately, SW is a complex software, and you need to be able to know how to make decisions about how you model. This book gives you the information you need in order to make good modeling decisions, because I can’t write tutorials for every thing you might have to model.

I have 6 left over 2009 Bibles. I’m selling them for $25 each (plus shipping) on eBay. Only for shipping in the US. The listing is here. I am not the seller, but I know the seller, and the books are from me. I’ll be making space for some new SolidWorks 2010 books, due in a couple of weeks.

CNET reports that the Kindle is the item that has most often been given as a gift from Amazon.com. I thought it was interesting that Amazon said it was the “most gifted” rather than the thing that people wanted to buy for themselves.

My mother asked me about which was better, Sony or Kindle. After a little research, I had to say I preferred Sony. You didn’t seem to be wasting your money on a lifetime cellular connection – and “lifetime” only means until it dies, which can mean anything.

Kim got me a Sony pocket e-reader.  I was able to download David Weisberg’s history of CAD, and load it up on the reader, shown to the left. Mr. Weisberg made this book available for free, asking only a charitable donation to the Cancer League of Colorado.  It is in PDF format, and works well on the pocket reader. I also downloaded a King James Bible in PDF, mainly just to see if I could. I could put my own books on PDF and put them on here (uses a USB wire). Other people have also thought Sony made a better product than Amazon.

I enjoy reading from the e-reader as much as I enjoy reading from paper books. There is a little inconvenience factor with the e-reader, but then there is also the fact that I can fit so many books into such a small space, so it makes traveling with books great.

The form factor of the readers makes me believe that laptops are going to continue to evolve toward slates, especially with all the buzz around touch and multitouch. And with the readers ranging from $200 – $500 or more, the price point overlaps somewhat between readers and netbooks. And with Apple’s new tablet coming… who know what that’s going to do. Slate computers have not sold well, although I think they are a great idea and the future of mobile computing. I mean, the UPS guy uses a ruggedized slate. Great application, and I’m surprised that hasn’t caught on. It will be silly if it takes Apple creating a tablet to make it cool. That will be the last straw for me. I will buy one of each of  Apple’s products and live stream a David Letterman-like st

Interestingly, the e-reader display is not backlit, it requires a little pop-up reading light for reading in the dark. The light is integrated into this folio type cover, with the switch showing in the lower left of the photo.

Anyway, on this blog we’ve had some discussion about paper vs electronic documentation, copyright issues, and a little about e-readers. Now that I have my own reader, it’s easier to put it all in a little perspective. I think its nice to have an e-reader that you aren’t locked into a service with. I can read anything in PDF, or can go through the Sony library.

Some of Google books are available in PDF. Classics that are in the public domain. I’m glad that Google has been restrained to at least follow the law. Simply because information exists does not mean it belongs to Google. I’m not a content pirate – stealing copyrighted stuff really bothers me, but at the same time, I don’t want to have to pay multiple times for the same thing. I already have Moby Dick in paperback. If I buy it now in a protected e-reader format, what happens if I buy another e-reader in a few years? Do I have to buy Moby Dick again? I’m with Bono on this one. Stealing content only hurts the creators. Until a time comes when corporate sponsors pay creators directly and then give away the content to the masses, the masses need to pay for written word, music, visual art, and other forms of copyrighted stuff. If you created something original that took time, effort, skill, talent or any other trait that makes you unique, why would you just give it away? Should all musicians be amateurs? No.

Anyway, I’m way off topic, but e-readers make you think about copyright issues. Mainly you don’t wanna get ripped off on either side. Readers don’t wanna buy books multiple times, and authors don’t want to give away PDFs of stuff people should buy.

The new SolidWorks Administration Bible is now available. I received a shipment of books, so book sellers will also be getting theirs soon. You can buy the book either directly from me, or from Amazon. The book is 570 pages, black and white, with a companion website. There is not much data to download.

This book is not about modeling, so don’t come crying to me because it doesn’t have a model of an F-5 in it. Old versions of SolidWorks software are not compatible with new version files. This is not my fault. Ask Jeff Ray about that. If you have to ask if this is for beginners, the book is probably not for you. There are no step-by-step tutorials in this book. It is assumed you already know how to use the software, and you are reading the book to learn how to administer SolidWorks. This book does not cover educational versions, and is not intended for classroom use. Warantee is void if you are enrolled in classes of any kind. If you are unable to read, this book will not help you. Feeding this book to goats will not make the goat able to administer SolidWorks. If you need a version with larger type, go buy a magnifying glass, which will also work with other books. If you want a free book, go buy one first, then ask your SolidWorks reseller to reimburse you.

If you’re wondering why I haven’t been blogging much recently, this book is part of the reason.

Will I have a couple of armloads of these at Anaheim? Prolly not. I was able to sneak surfacing books in the back of the convertible, but I’m not driving to Anaheim.

This is the book that has been brewing this summer, and is scheduled to become available in November. A little editing and last minute additions remain. It is based on SolidWorks 2009 and 2010, and is a reference for new administrators, SW users who act as their own administrators, and IT people pressed into SolidWorks service.

I spent a couple of years as the Engineering Services Manager for a high tech manufacturer in Rochester, NY, and I learned a few things, but all of it the hard way. I was responsible for SW admin, document management, and the product development process admin in addition to a team of SW users. I spent some time as a software implementer and advanced troubleshooter with a SolidWorks reseller, which gave me experience with a wide range of companies and their business, engineering and documentation processes.

I asked Ed Cyganik, long time administrator for a company with structured processes to be my technical editor for this book precisely because his experience was very thorough and very different from mine. I was more familiar with writing my own standards for use in the consumer products and plastics design industry, and not as familiar with the highly structured auto/aero/military world of standards that Ed knows. Ed added a lot to the book, particularly in standards and file management areas.

This was a book that I felt needed to exist. So many people ask for this type of information, and basically, if you can’t find it on the SolidWorks website, and you can’t get it in bits and pieces from the SW forum, you’re not gonna find it.  The other CAD Admin books available on the market are either directed at Autocad, or are almost entirely about schmoozing management, not at all about any actual CAD functions, or rather old.

The big topics are installation in its various forms, Toolbox and Standards/Best Practice. The goal is as always to arm the reader with enough information to make informed decisions. The book is ~540 pages.

Chapter list:

1. Defining CAD Administration
2. Preparing Information Technology
3. Preparing Document Management
4. Operating System Tools you need to know
5. Training Users
6. Installing the Software
7. Licensing
8. Standardizing Settings
9. Maximizing use of Templates
10. Implementing Toolbox
11. Establishing Libraries
12. Writing Standards for SolidWorks
13. Custom Properties
14. Establishing Best Practice
15. Automating Tasks
16. Supporting Users
17. Collaboration
18. Managing Change
19. Rolling out new Service Packs
20. Rolling out new versions
21. Introducing SolidWorks Workgroup PDM
22. Installing and Configuring the Vault
23. Establishing users, groups and permissions
24. Using Toolbox and other libraries with Workgroup PDM

App A on-line help resources
App B Sources for Standards
App C Tools, Options

Here is what it’s not:

• Not a tutorial
• Not for teaching new users
• Not for classroom use
• Not to be taken internally

Jeff Mirisola is the first person to review the Surfacing book. Check out his review. 

I personally really like this book. Of course I’m a bit biased. You can say bad things about the 2007/2009 Bible (and many folks do, that book is just too big to please everyone), but the surfacing book is something I’m very proud of. There might be some things here and there that could be improved upon, but overall, I really like the way it turned out. 

Jeff hit on a couple of the things I like best about the book – first is the yin/yang of finding the good and bad in the software and presenting it all in a useful way. The book is not a banner-waving homage to the greatness of SolidWorks, although it does that at times when the functionality deserves it. Nor is it a rabid critique of SolidWorks shortcomings in surfacing (although where appropriate, there is a little of that as well). 

I aimed more at the practical guide from someone who has used the software. 

Let me say right up front, this is not a “hold-my-hand” tutorial. If you think following steps in a list is “learning”, then this book is not for you. This book deals a lot with concepts, because there may come a time when you are called upon to design something other than something I have written a list of steps for. You have to be able to apply the tools in the software to what you are doing, and this book tries to present that kind of information. When stuff works, and when it doesn’t.  There may be some signature Matt Lombard opinion pieces here and there, but I try to show stuff by example, and as real world as I can make it.

I’ve read one of the Rhino books out there, and in my opinion, this is a better surfacing book. I’m not ashamed to write about surfacing from an engineering point of view, and the book is clearly about modeling as opposed to design. This distinction is I think why the book works from an engineering point of view without completely alienating more artistic types. 

The book is just under 600 pages, printed on good quality paper and all the illustrations are in color. It is really nicely done. The 07/09 bibles are in grayscale, and its just difficult to make that look good sometimes.

I really think this type of book (for a niche topic) is the only place you can really find great content. General books are just too wide open. The software is just too huge to write about it in general. You’ve got to pare down your topic.

I’ve also got to say that I find writing for beginners has very few rewards. It seems the people who know the least about the topic are the harshest critics, which is more than a little ironic to me. I really prefer niche topics where you can find people who appreciate the information, and know that isn’t available anywhere else. 

Anyway, thanks to Jeff for writing a nice review.

I know I tend to scare off beginners. I’m emotionally scarred from not getting training as a young SolidWorks user. So, if there are any new SW users still left reading this site, instead of buying my book and criticising it because it doesn’t cater to noobs, I found this site for you. I’m not convinced this is totally  legal, it appears to be a 200+ page teacher guide for the educational side of things, so get it while the getting’s good. It’s at least a couple of versions old, but I don’t think for the level of stuff they are covering that the age is going to make much difference.

You could go a step further and read the Getting Started guide for SW2001. You can also find old Planchard books here and a 2005 Planchard assemblies book, a 2005 Planchard tutorial, as well as a SW2004 What’s New, a SolidWorks 2008/Rhino surfacing lesson, a confidential 2006 UGS “internal and reseller use only” comparison between SE and SW, a 482 page Essentials training manual for SW2008 in Portuguese, lots of stuff in other languages and from universities, and where ever.

After looking at it, I would question the legality of much of the material people have put here. From the looks of the copyrighted SW training materials,  electronic versions have been bootlegged, not like scanned paper docs. Access to electronic versions of SW training manuals is limited. How hard is it to find a portuguese speaking SW reseller? Uploading restricted access copyrighted data to a public site is stupid.

How did I find this? Someone clicked on a link to this blog from somewhere on that site, and the link shows up in my stats. I don’t think Scribd is a secret, but I had never thought to look there for SW stuff before.

I’m sometimes discouraged by the fact that I see so many people searching for obviously bootlegged documentation and software, including my books. Stats for this site show what people are searching for. I like to do stuff for people for free, but I don’t like to have what is meant to be for sale stolen. For years I kept a traditional website with pages for different topics, and ppt presentations, and white papers and stuff that was all free. I just closed that site down because this blog takes all my effort now. Please make use of free stuff. Encourage people to make stuff available. But also have some respect, and if it’s a resource that’s for sale, pay for it.

 The SolidWorks 2009 Bible is finally printed and delivered! The final page count is 1130, only slightly more ponderous than before. 

I will start getting these out to those who have paid for the book and contest winners. If you want to buy one now that you can see that it is a physical reality, not just a far away distant promise, you can click the Buy Now button below. The book sells for $45, which includes shipping, and a personalized author signature if that kind of thing keeps you going. 

This book was a lot of work for being simply a revision. It encompasses the changes in both 2008 and 2009, so just about anything that has an interface screen shot had to be redone. 

Ricky Jordan was the Tech Editor for this book, which means that he was the one who pointed out the mistakes in the original book, and the new text written for the 2009 edition. Ricky helped a lot, especially seeing that the first edition of the book hardly saw any technical editing at all. It’s hard work researching and writing 1100 pages worth of information.

The biggest changes in this edition are the reorganization of the first 5 chapters, and especially the birth of Chapter 5 – Visualization Techniques. I added a chapter on Plastic Techniques and Mold Tools. My friend Wes Cobb wanted a whole chapter on Mold Tools, but I think that one has to wait… Of course that’s what I said last time. 

There is also a new chapter on the Motion Manager. This was difficult to write because the old SolidWorks Animator is full of, well, quirks. Getting examples that worked properly was difficult.

Thank you all for your patience, and especially for all of you who pre-ordered. I hope you enjoy and learn from the book, and if you can offer feedback, I will really appreciate it.

 What do you think? David Letterman masquerading as Alfred E. Newman? Al never seems to age, he remains about 13 years old. 

I’ve had a couple of great suggestions for contests recently, so I’m going to go with them. This contest is to celebrate half a million page views and rss hits. Yippee. I’m going to give away 3 SW09 Bibles. Ok, I’m assuming that the SolidWorks 2009 Bible is going to be published, although I can’t get a date from my publisher. Several people have already paid for one, and are on the list to get them as soon as I get them. Who knows? Ah, hang it. Run the contest anyway.

In  homage to my favorite late night TV comedian, here are 3 contests you can enter to win one of these elusive books:

Stupid SolidWorks Tricks

Stupid Pet Tricks has always been one of my favorite segments on Letterman. Well, that and, God rest his soul, Mr. Melman. So, you know how sometimes you feel like your SolidWorks modeling is flipping around and doing stuff that you wouldn’t do in public unless they were going to give you a dog biscuit or something? Well, here you can feel right at home, among friends. Bring in your stupid SolidWorks tricks and maybe we can all learn something. What sort of thing qualifies? Well, they could be legitimate tips, and they could be the far out variety. You might also post some stuff that shouldn’t work but does, or things that give unexpected results. Stupid bugs would qualify. Whatever you have, submit it, and I’ll let readers decide what’s best. Have some fun with it. Submit text descriptions as comments. Submit models, images or other materials through email to me.

Top 10 Lists

You couldn’t do Letterman without a top 10 list. So here’s what I want from you:  Write me a top 10 list of your favorite enhancements. It could be facetious (means funny and/or sarcastic), or it could be serious. This is in honor of the SW World top 10 list where they accumulate some odd top 10 requests. I know you can do this. Submit top 10s in comments to this post. 

Best Blog Post Suggestion

Readers are way smarter than I am. When I look through my list of posts and see that some posts get tons of comments, and some get zero comments, well, that sends a message. You tell me what kind of blog posts you want to see, then I’ll have readers vote on it, and we’ll pick a winner. It’s that easy.

And yes, “blog” is short for Blagojevich, and a lot easier to spell. Which brings us to…

Judging

I would like to put these contests up to votes. Readers participating on the site is a good thing. If a vote doesn’t work out, or if you find that people are soliciting money for votes (politicians remind us that a vote is a #$%^ valuable thing, and that you shouldn’t give it away for &^%$ing free), I may have to step in and appoint a winner. By the way, if you really want to win send your info on the back of a large denomination bill, even if the book is only worth $50 to start with.

Anyway, this contest will run for a week or until I get bored with it, and then we’ll assign winners. Have fun with it.

From the time the 2007 book was about half done, I was considered a “Research Partner”, which is the level you get before they make you a full partner for a released product.

I applied for full partner status over a year ago, and didn’t make a fuss about it. I know they contacted some of my references. My phone calls, emails and personal inquiries, however, went unanswered for the entire time. Until recently. They hired a new person for this job who answers the phone and emails and even hunted me down specifically to wrap this up. Thanks! I really do appreciate the initiative.

Current Status – Solution Partner
Product – SolidWorks 2007 Bible
Industry – Publications
Solution Partner Program Contact: Marie Planchard

Who’s to say, but maybe having a competitor as my solution partner contact is not the best choice. doesn’t seem to have helped anything. Anyway. Now that the book is 1.5 years old, it’s time to do it all over again for the surfacing and 09 books. Mainly I just wanted to get my company listed.

I’ve had a few requests for the url of the downloads for the files that go along with the Surfacing Bible. It looks like the link was not included in the book. It is listed on the Amazon site, but I realize that not everybody buys stuff from Amazon.

I realize a lot of people will probably download the files without buying the book. There is in the neighborhood of 200 MB worth of data. I would ask that if you download the files and benefit from them at all, that you either throw a few bucks in the Tip Jar at the upper right of my blog, or go ahead and buy the book, which will benefit you even more when combined with the files.

Anyway, I don’t intend to be a hard sell, I just like to get paid for hard work.

So, here’s the link. You’ll also need a chapter list, and a link to buy the book.

Thanks to everyone who has helped make this rather niche book so successful!

The SolidWorks MotionManager is the new name for SolidWorks Animator. It was moved into the base product, and has received its own new chapter in the 2009 Bible. One of the things I did to learn the software was to order the book SolidWorks MotionManager 2008 from Rob Rodriguez.

The book is 192 pages, in color, printed on good quality paper with nice looking images. The book includes images of the SolidWorks interface. It comes with a CD that has all of the parts, assemblies, and finished animations used in the book. It is laid out for the most part like the training books. The training books are very popular, and are in general well written.

The book includes all of the basics, so if you are learning the animation functions for the first time, this is good news. If you already know a little about Animator, you might read until page 70 before you find any new information. So all of the basic strengths of the existing SolidWorks training materials are there. Like the training books, this book is also set up in a tutorial style.

There is an advanced section in the book, and several chapters that talk about functionality that is more than just basic. How to use multiple cameras in an animation, animating the cameras, and using the animation software along with simulation tools and so on. There is a lot of good info here.

On the downside, this book never mentions any sort of troubleshooting techniques, or how to diagnose problems, also typical of other documentation from SolidWorks. It keeps the techniques relatively simple, just showing you how to use the tools through simple tutorials. The assemblies are all ones that you may be familiar with from the SW training classes and other documentation.

It isn’t the fault of the book, but the terminology that you have to wade through is rather confusing. Especially when you realize that you have to start figuring in all of the gratuitous name changes in 2009. MotionManager, Motion, Basic Motion, Assembly Motion, Dynamic Assembly motion are all distinct “things” that you somehow need to be familiar with. The book defines terms, but didn’t make as big a deal of it as they might have. You can use the software without knowing what some of the terminology refers to, but some you have to know.

It is a little disheartening when in the opening pages of the book, you read ” MotionManager is such a robust and feature rich application that it is impractical to cover every minute detail and aspect of the software and still have the book be a reasonable length.” The book is only 192 pages, it could use more of that minute detail. The PhotoWorks book, which I found to be more helpful was over 500 pages.

I wish they had added some additional tutorials that showed useful techniques such as using assembly templates with animations already stored in them, how to rotate the view around the part axis rather than the screen axis, and some troubleshooting information, which is the stuff I need the most.

In general, if you are a new user and need basic to intermediate information, this book will be useful to you. If you have ever really used Animator for a project, you probably know 70% of what this book has to offer. For $60 it’s probably worth having in your office library.

This post has been a long time coming. The SolidWorks 2009 Bible is in the final stages of completion. A few more edits to reflect still-changing software, and then off to the printer.

There are a few notable things about this new version. The first is that this version is going to have some additional depth to it because the technical editor was Ricky Jordan. Ricky is a real SolidWorks user with a broad depth of knowledge about the software, a keen mind, and is a good deal more even keeled than I am. I think it is important to balance out my crazy opinions with someone who is a little more careful. Ricky added a lot to the overall content and a lot of perspective on many of the tools. This book would not have been the same without his careful and well considered critiques.

I can say confidently that the 2009 edition of this book should hold together more tightly than the 2007 edition because the editing has been done more carefully, and there were a lot of lessons learned from the first time around. The 2007 book was really my first full length book. The folks at Wiley were patient with teaching the ropes on this mammoth 1100 page piece of writing.

The early chapters of the book were slightly rearranged, recombined, and edited so that I could add a new chapter on Visualization Techniques. Of course this includes the use of the new RealView tools, and Appearances. I have neatly skipped over the 2008 release, and have focussed on the 2009 interface and tools.

The 2009 book has removed some of the irrelevant commentary, and tried to be more efficient with words and images.

Later in the book, I removed a VERY lame API chapter, and replaced it with a chapter on Plastics and Mold Tools. Also, since SolidWorks Animator was pulled down into the base product and renamed to SolidWorks MotionManager, I wrote a new chapter for that as well.

Several of the chapter updates were painful due to the amount of work required. The new Tools, Options appendix is probably 50% new with all of the changes to Document Properties, especially Custom Standards. There were many happy moments as I edited out sections of the text that referred to bugs that had been fixed in the last two years. There were also a few frustrating moments when checking other bugs, and finding them still there.

If you have not read one of my books before, I just want to get a few things out in the open. First, I am not an educator, and I do not write text books. I am an industry professional, and I write about real usage of the software. I write from my experience using the software. I don’t spend a lot of time using other packages, so my work hours are focussed on this one software.

I do not focus on tutorials. Each chapter does have a tutorial at the end, but generally just as a way to show how to use the tools. I think tutorials are best for low level information, but can’t really convey answers to the question “why”. When you are done with a tutorial, you know how to build whatever you built in the tutorial, but you really don’t understand how the tools work. The old difference between giving a fish, and teaching how to fish.

I try to give as much detailed information as I possibly can. If I have to do the same example 5 different ways to show something, well, that’s what I’ll do. In a book this size completely written by a single person, and without help from the software developer, there are going to be omissions. I ONLY had 1100 pages, and to be truly thorough would have taken several hundred more pages and months of additional research. So please forgive me if it’s imperfect.

The books are full of tips, best practice, bonus stuff that’s not documented elsewhere, warnings about bugs, and techniques that I’ve gathered from years of real modeling work. The books I write are not so much geared toward beginners as toward more experienced users. Sure, beginners can learn from them, but the books are really meant as a desk reference, where you look up a particular topic and read about it. I have heard of people reading the books through cover to cover, but that’s not something I recommend.

Something that’s a little uncomfortable to acknowledge is that some people on Amazon have rated the 2007 book very poorly. In some cases the criticism was well deserved, and in other cases it was more a question of reader expectations than of flaws in the book. So if you’re in one of these categories, you might consider doing yourself and me a big favor, and go buy a different book. If you are expecting a very basic hold-my-hand tutorial, you will not like my books. Any of them. If you think you should know how to model multibody parts before assemblies, you won’t like my books. If all you really need to know is how to import AutoCAD data and make 2D drawings, you won’t like my books. If you are looking for something that makes it easy for an Inventor user to transition to SolidWorks, you won’t like my books. If you are a student or job applicant looking to learn enough SolidWorks skills to get by in a class or an interview by reading a few pages one evening, you’re not going to like my books. If you think SolidWorks is a perfect piece of software, and it never rains in your world, you will hate my books. All of them. I tend to talk about real usage, which means I’m constantly referring to workarounds and bugs and hidden functionality and out of the way techniques.

The people who are going to like my stuff are users who want to improve. If you are curious about how stuff works, and if you think knowing how it works will help you do a better job, then my books are for you. If you are detail oriented and want to know what all of the options do, you’ll like my books.

Jessica Rivera, pictured above, of CCNTV, reports that David Weisberg is putting together a 650 page freely distributed ebook entitled The Engineering Design Revolution. Cadalyst reports that the book will be available on July 1 (2008) at www.cadhistory.net. So far, it’s not there.

David is not taking any money for this book, but asks that you donate to a charity specified on the website if you like.

I look forward to seeing the book. I’ve enjoyed the many versions of the talk that Jon Hirschtick and John McEleney have given on the History of CAD at several user group meetings I have attended. To have all of this and more rolled into a book written by one of the guys who helped make the history will be instructive.

Will someone give a holler when this thing hits?