SolidWorks 2009 Bible
Product Description:
SolidWorks Bible is a comprehensive reference-tutorial that covers the basics, but then quickly ramps up to more advanced level topics. Every feature is thoroughly covered yet written in a way that makes learning this robust program seem non-threatening and uncomplicated. In a market full of books for beginners this is the one book that goes into extensive detail, not just on "how" the software works, but in many cases "why" it works the way it does. The author is well known in the SolidWorks community and uses SolidWorks on a daily basis as his main design tool in his contracting and consulting work. Many topics covered in SolidWorks Bible are not found in any other publication or even documentation directly from SolidWorks.
Summary: Solidworks 2009 Bible
Rating: 5
This is not a beginner book on Solidworks. This book is excellent if you have taken Solidworks tutorials and you want to understand more if not most of Solidworks features. Although mostly covering Solidworks 2009 and 2008 it explains what changed from 2007. I find the explaining of how most of the menu items work valuable. I also like explaining how Options can be changed. I recommend reading the book and following the book's tutorials. I personally keep this book by my computer as I find this book much much better than the Solidworks help files. Only thing would be better would be a pdf file of the book on the book's cd. Compared to other books on Solidworks I consider this one, the best book to keep at work next to my computer.
Summary: Breadth - too long
Rating: 1
The book reminds me of someone trying hard to please everyone (long breadth) but falls short in numerous ways (wisdom). Do not get me wrong, Matt knows Solidworks, (he will be the first one to tell you) but after talking with other user group leaders, vars and SolidWorks employees, his opinions do not always follow good modeling practice. The book is weak as it pertains to: drawing, motion studies, Photoworks, Photoview, TolAnalyst, (most of the Evaluate tab components), Standard, Advanced and Mechanical mates (explaining them to the normal user and how they do not work if you do not create a perfect model as on pages 440- 442), Dimxpert, and any type of Add-in. It states, "Packed with step-by-step tutorials." One - two broken tutorials per chapter with little or no instructions does not constitute packed in my world. The good thing about the book; it's not written like a blog nor a comic strip anymore. I'm sure I will be hearing from someone on my opinion.
Summary: The Reference for Professionals
Rating: 5
There comes a point in using any complex software product when you need a thick, well written and exhaustive manual. The more capable the software, the more vital to your job, the more you need it. Luckily for users of the SolidWorks design software, Matt Lombard has written one.
Intended as a reference for SolidWorks professionals - not as a classroom text - it's good enough to read cover to cover. I'm about halfway through. For those just learning SolidWorks there are many introductory texts available such as Planchard's "Engineering Design." For my advanced students though I am using Lombard for its breadth and wisdom. It covers virtually every command while distilling the industry's best thinking on where, why, how and even whether to use them.
After a decade as a design engineer and 6 years of teaching SolidWorks I didn't expect to learn so much about best practices from any book. I had already adopted layout sketches to drive sets of related features, mated parts to assembly reference geometry instead of to other parts, and kept in-context geometry to a carefully watched minimum. Not that complex models didn't develop errors, late changes result in days of patching, and inherited designs fall apart at my touch. But Lombard shed unexpected light on all of this, providing context and deeper understanding where I was already on the right track, elsewhere pointing out paths I should have taken. There follow four examples drawn largely from chapter 11, "Editing and Evaluation", a summary of best practices. The exact wording is mine, the information presented from Lombard.
1). Ideally the elements of a model link in a tree or pyramid shaped structure. Establish fundamental geometry in a few sketches at the feature manager top. Have subsequent features refer to these fundamental sketches, or as high in the feature manager as possible. This produces a hierarchical structure in which features depend on as little, and as stable, preceding geometry as possible. Having less intermediate geometry, thus fewer internal relationships, such models lend themselves easily to change.
It's worth pointing out that most instruction material takes the more obvious approach of building each part on the one before it like links in a chain. And this approach works fine for the simple parts used in teaching. By contrast what I above term the hierarchical approach was formulated over years of real world modeling. We call it best practice precisely because it doesn't break down in the field.
2). Contrary to what I have habitually taught my students, simply deleting geometry and relations flagged by error messages and recreating them from scratch has definite drawbacks. Or as Lombard puts it, delete is not a command you want to use while editing. Simply recreating flagged geometry changes the internal names of that geometry, names that yet more relations may reference, so losing them results in even more errors. Best to fix the underlying problem, for instance by reattaching dangling relations.
3). Whenever possible, reference sketch geometry, not feature geometry, as SolidWorks can change the names of the latter. Let me give a simple example showing how fundamental this advice can be. Let's say you want to model a stepped pyramid. Start "sketch1" on the top plane, draw a rectangle, then extrude it to create a solid block, the first step. Start "sketch2" on top of the block. Make "sketch1" visible, select it, and click the "offset" command to create the smaller rectangle for the next step. Notice I had you "offset" the first sketch, NOT the edges of the top surface of the first extrusion. Why? Because sketches are more stable than solid features. Consistently building from sketches requires discipline, but you're less likely to get an error further down the road.
4). There is never a reason to delete external relations. Locking accomplishes the same thing - eliminating system overhead - without cutting your model loose from its anchors. For example, I may choose via an in-context edit to locate a set of holes in a part according to an assembly layout sketch. That task accomplished, but not wanting to suffer the overhead of that relationship every time I open the part, I lock those references. Should the holes change in future and an alignment issue arise, I can always unlock those references again.
Not, it seems, that that's the end of the story. In the chapter on Modeling in Context Lombard states, "Best practice is to not put yourself in a situation where you are using either locked or broken references." He further points out, "You cannot selectively lock or break external relations." You can lock or break either all external relations in a part or none of them.
As useful as it is, the book is not free of defects. The earliest chapters, while likely to be ignored by the knowledgeable, have gaps to frustrate the novice. Also, Wiley apparently bailed out of ambitious plans for the CD which is best accessed simply through windows explorer and does not include an electronic version of the text. What it does include are excellent model files that support the text. Unfortunately these files are in SolidWorks 2009 and SolidWorks is not forward compatible. That is, nobody with an older version can read them, including those using 2008-2009 education release. Still, the author has indicated a willingness to support compatibility with student software in future editions and pointed out that many of the same files are available with his 2007 book if you happen to own it. In another note to teachers, no supplementary educational material or the contents of CD's are available on line.
As emphatically stated by the author, this reference this book does not, cannot, and I would chime in must not aim to serve the novice well. Not that I'm against clarity of presentation, which it achieves. Rather, it's that SolidWorks is just too large a subject to cover in a mere 1129 pages including appendices and index with any more than scattered examples. We professionals need the exhaustiveness, the delving into every detail of every command. In fact we need more of it, not less, though the expert editorializing is welcome too.
In sum, I find this book downright addictive. On first receiving it I found myself forgetting I had other work to do. A SolidWorks professional opening it at random instantly recognizes a colleague at the top of the field. There is simply nowhere else to find this kind of expertise right now - and at a cost below that of introductory texts to boot.
Summary: Design Engineer Jim Hill gives this book 5 stars
Rating: 5
There is only one way that you can know (and remember) evertything about SoldiWorks software and that is with this book.
If you use SolidWorks on a professional basis than you must own this book, without it your just an amateur.
Due to the downturn in Automotive Industry I am seeking SolidWorks work. Please contact me[...] if you could use some help.
Summary: Excellent Reference
Rating: 5
You wouldn't read this book cover to cover. It's not a step-by-step guide. But if you have a question about a topic, go and read the chapter on that topic, and the answer has got to be in there. What I like most about this book is that it covers a lot of "best practice" topics. I haven't seen that kind of stuff in any of the other SolidWorks or other CAD books I've read over the years. The approach lombard takes is different from the basic college text book, and it's not a hand-holding tutorial, but it is an excellent resource of knowledge and real world based tips.
7z/PDF/No Password/Size: 19.6 MB