No comments about A&D Series 1: Pascal Van Der Kelen (A&D).

No comments about Space Between People: How the Virtual Changes Physical Architecture.

1 comments about Tolerance Analysis of Electronic Circuits Using MATHCAD.

1. Does not offer enough for $50. Not enough examples. Does not explain text well enough. Format is small...pocket book size.Tolerance Analysis of Electronic Circuits Using MATHCAD

No comments about Poster Collection 01 - Revue 1926.

1 comments about Autodesk Inventor 11 Accelerated Productivity: Assemblies and Advanced Concepts, An Interactive Course for Autodesk Inventor 11.

1. This is a MASTERPIECE OF TEACHING something this complex in the easiest way possible!!! I had about 3 weeks to find a way to learn Inventor. I researched the author and found he was a certified Autodesk Inventor instructor for over 10 years and his course is certified by Autodesk, as confirmed on the Autodesk website. I also found these courses for Inventor 8, so I could see he had lots of experience creating the courses. After viewing the demo on the TEDCF website, I knew the technique would work, and I liked his presentation style. I purchased Autodesk Inventor 11 Accelerated Productivity: Solid Modeling, An Interactive Course for Autodesk Inventor 11, Autodesk Inventor 11 Accelerated Productivity: Assemblies and Advanced Concepts, An Interactive Course for Autodesk Inventor 11, Autodesk Inventor 11 Accelerated Productivity: 2D Drafting and Customization, An Interactive Course for Autodesk Inventor 11, and Accelerated Productivity 11: Sheet Metal Design--An Interactive Course for Autodesk Inventor 11. As recommended, I listened to all of the lessons, and took notes to keep track of the big picture. There were a number of areas I would not need, so I just listened enough to know whether or not I needed it for my project. Then I organized my project and started creating my models and saw my invention come to life. It was an exciting moment made entirely possible by David Melvin's masterpiece of teaching. I go back and refresh my learning all the time. The memory jogger will search for the concept in the lessons and take you right to it. I believe the proof in his teaching style, borne of hard work and experience, is that he taught someone outside the profession to create models in Inventor 11 is so short a time!!! If you don't know how Inventor works, the program will not let you do anything. The only error messages I received were simple and easy to fix, because David Melvin taught me the big picture, and I designed my models using his experience to guide me. My only formal training is an engineering drafting course at University of Florida in 1965. Later, I changed my major from engineering to accounting, and am an auditor/CPA. David's straight talk on concept after concept makes it possible to focus all your energy on learning Inventor in a very short time. I will always be grateful to David Melvin for producing these courses and teaching me something I'll enjoy using the rest of my life.

5 comments about The Unofficial Guide to LEGO MINDSTORMS Robots.

1. I have recently bought a copy of this book. Many of these projects and info are very good to know to programming the RCX and a crash course in legOS, pbForth, etc.



2. Well written, docummented and explained.

   Plenty of examples and good references.

   Well worth the money.




3. After purchasing The Unofficial Guide to LEGO MINDSTORMS Robots by Jonathan B. Knudsen, I was very excited about working on each project in the book. Then I continued to read and found myself getting disappointed with the terrible photos, less then detailed descriptions, and easy working robots. I though this book was going to blow me away with new robots creations but it fell short. For the price I paid I expected more, more robots, more information, more of everything. I have to admit, the information on the different O/S's are great but tying to get them to work was hell. It was better than 3 stars but not by much. Buy this book if you want more info on programs, but look on the web if you want more robot creations.



4. This book is very well written and easy to read. It starts off slow and simple, and advances into programming "Behavior" based robots, which is very interesting. The chapters on custom sensors don't say that much, but they are still a good intro to homebrew sensors. If you want a compilation of tons of robots to build, buy "Dave Baum's Definitive Guide". If you want a disorganized 'Everything but the kitchen sink' book, buy "Extreme Mindstorms". If you want well written, well structured, well thought out and thought proviking, buy this book.



5. Your an adult that never grew out of loving toys, an engineer at heart, and have been bitten by the Lego Mindstorms Robotics Invention Set. Ya have built everything in the Constructopedia, met all of the challenges but are now looking to go beyond the box. Where do you start? Jonathan Knudsen's Unofficial Guide to Ledo Mindstorms may be one of the best answers. He does a great job with construction tips, and provides a great survey of programming alternatives such as NQC, pbForth, and LegOS. He also has some insight into constructing your own sensors. Best of all, each chapter concludes with links to relevant sites on the WWW. I highly recommend it!

1 comments about CATIA V5 Tutorials Mechanism Design & Animation.

1. This book shows a few of the tool bars needed for CATIA. The examples are for simple mechanics such as seen on the cover. The information is interesting; however unless you have the software and are using this book as a beginning CATIA course (and have access to CATIA Version 5, Release 14 & 15) or an upgrade information manual there is nothing unique and/or useful to the casual reader looking for a grasp on what CATIA is.
   
   It does serve a purpose of demystifying the application for people that are unfamiliar with the product. But what a price to pay to find out. A 30 day trial dvd/cd would help this book immensely.

4 comments about Curves and Surfaces for CAGD: A Practical Guide (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Graphics).

1. Item is in good condition and I recommend buying from this seller.



2. The fourth edition of this book was excellent. I'm sorry to say this one is not quite as good, as hard as that may be to believe. There are two problems: 1) a large number of errors, (worst of all) many of which are concetentrated in the chapter on b-splines. 2) in many places the book over-abstracts, and i feel that blossom form is overused here.

   The first problem is quite bad: anyone who has learned the material before knows that superscript and subscript "comprehension" is required for this subject. Having a text that is full of errors in these (even if you have the errata, without which the text is near useless) erodes the ability to get the geometric intuition necessary to absorb the material.

   The second problem is just that the abstractions used are sometimes more complex, and less intuitive, than the orginal form/construct/method being described. I use the blossom notation as an example: it is very useful in showing the relation between bezier and b-spline curves, but it is hardly touched on for that, despite being used constantly throughout the book. Another example: the decription of knot vectors is abstracted nearly beyond utility.

   The fourth edition had almost *no* errors in it. It was very, very good. I hope there is a 6th edition that goes where this one should have!




3. I found this book to be extremely helpful in grasping the fundamentals of CAGD. The author's style is very informal and engaging (yes, despite the very 'techie' nature of the subject). The very liberally distributed illustrations give a good idea about 'whats-actually-going-on'? In all, a very highly recommended book, even if you are remotely interested in CAGD.



4. This book should be considered as a bible for people (including students, researchers, engineers and programmers) working in the CAGD area. The author placed a good balance between the discussion of theoretical (mathematical) and practical (implementation) issues of curves and surfaces design.

No comments about Callison: Creating Smarter Places.

1 comments about Architectural Modeling & Rendering with AutoCad R13 and R14.

1. Within a week I was making my first 3d architectural model with good results. This book is very good and avoids to be general: it is focused on architecture and that is a relief after seeing a lot of books which explain autocad features with examples from all disciplines (mechanics, etc), which tend to confuse time-needing architects and draftmen. I recommended it in full.

   The tutorial about shadow rendering is good but I had some trouble getting the right result (Acad R14). There is a bug in Autocad render module when MS Windows is set to international settings, I lost a couple of days finding out the solution to this problem. I found it at the technical support page of Autodesk. In the book there is no mention to it.