Dezignstuff SolidWorks Blog

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.