1 comments about Autocad And Its Applications: Comprehensive, 2007.

1. covers all aspects of autocad 2006 in simple easy to understand language with hands on tutorials.

No comments about Simplified Building Design for Wind and Earthquake Forces (Parker/Ambrose Series of Simplified Design Guides).

No comments about New Spas and Resorts.

1 comments about More One-Story Homes: 475 Superb Home Plans from 810 to 5,400 Square Feet.

1. I found this book useful for narrowing down my choices in what I do and don't want in my new house. Ultimately, we will probably have our house custom-designed by a local architect, so we just used this book to get ideas. It has a wide variety of single story home plans, so after we got a feel for what we DID and DID NOT want based on these plans, we went to a few home plan websites to perform more detailed searches and narrow it down further.

   I really didn't care for the organization of the book. The categories seemed a little too broad, and the plans didn't seem to be organized with much thought (not in ascending order by square footage like some other books we have looked at.)

4 comments about SystemVerilog for Design Second Edition: A Guide to Using SystemVerilog for Hardware Design and Modeling.

1. (My review is about the 2006 2nd-edition, not the older 1st edition!)
   
   In general, I agree with the other reviews. This book is written for an audience of Verilog designers, who know the Verilog language (and its limitations) all to well. The book covers Systemverilog's new features like, enum, struct, interfaces, etc., from the perspective of "how to write better RTL-code using Systemverilog instead of Verilog.' For example, it explains the pros/cons of the (Systemverilog) "interface" construct, vs a flat group of (Verilog) module-port declarations. The discussion helps designers appreciate RTL-coding from a (slightly) higher levle of abstraction.
   
   You don't need a specific background (i.e. design-engineer) to benefit from this book; you just need a good familiarity with conventional Verilog.
   
   As others have said, this book is not suitable as a reference. The paragraphs flow well, but it's hard to lookup an arbitrary topic from the index. So far, no hardcover-book can displace the official IEEE Systemverilog LRM as the best reference.
   
   And since the book focuses on the 'design' (synthesizeable) aspect of Systemverilog, it doesn't cover non-synthesizeable language features (like classes, constrained random variables, etc.)



2. System Verilog is the ASIC HDL of the future, and this is one of the first books specifically addressing its use for Design, as opposed to Assertions or Testbenches. As such, it is an important book. And the authors are certainly Verilog experts.
   
   My main criticism of the book is that it's not so useful as a reference. I pull it off this shelf, flip to the back, and often find the Index lacking. It's only four pages long, which is awfully short for such a long technical textbook.



3. As an experienced hardware designer who wants to know what SV is all about, this book was great. It introduced the langauge in a natural way, explained what is synthesisable and is more readable than the LRM. You can also download the book examples from the author's website. This is the audience that this book aimed at and it hits the mark, especially as most designers can get the company to pay the high price of the book.
   
   Downsides: there are some differences from the LRM, as this book was written before the final draft, and despite the book saying the chapter 10 complete design example simulates, it doesn't.



4. Here are my opinions after buying and reading the book.
   - If you are student / fresher who wants to "learn" System Verilog then skip this book. This book assumes that you already know Verilog well.
   - This book deals only with design. Authors plan to come up with one more for Verification.
   - If you have plenty of cash ($130 for design and $130 for verification book) or your rich company pays for your books then go ahead and add this book to your library. If not then read free LRM http://www.eda.org/sv/SystemVerilog_3.1a.pdf
   - Practice, practice, practice. Just by reading Verilog books no one has become a good design/verification engineer.

   (...)Verilog won't become IEEE standard as it is. Thus this book will be superceded by a version which is slightly different anyway.

No comments about Passivhaus-Bauteilkatalog | Details for Passive Houses: Ökologisch bewertete Konstruktionen | A Catalogue of Ecologically Rated Constructions.

1 comments about Design: The History, Theory and Practice of Product Design.

1. If you study product design, then this is the book to have.

1 comments about Fantasy Architecture: 1500-2036.

1. This book is full of houses, buildings, cities and other architectural designs that could have been built, if there had been more money or less common sense. Many of these designs are before there time and some are just ideas that could never be. Tombs, bridges, toys, video games and other items from the past that have shaped and channeled our ideas of modern and future architecture. The book was printed for a touring exhibition but is still worth getting just for itself. Lots of images to look at and dream about.

2 comments about The Vanguard Landscapes and Gardens of Martha Schwartz.

1. Martha Schwartz views landscape design as an artistic medium and her gardens embrace unexpected materials, vibrant colors, and a minimum of plant life. Based on traditional landscape design models her finished products present a challenging vision of nature, landscape, and design. The Vanguard Landscapes and Gardens of Martha Schwartz presents 32 visionary projects by this Boston original.

   Martha Schwartz has been, pushing the boundaries of garden design since her first 15 minutes of fame. In 1980 "The Bagel Garden" landed her on the cover of Landscape Architecture Magazine. In this installation, located at 190 Marlborough Street (her own front yard), she arranged bagels in two evenly spaced rows, atop purple aquarium gravel, around the perimeter of a pre-existing formal box hedge all surrounded by iron railings. Captured in beautiful photographs it is easy to see how she started making waves.

   The Vanguard Landscapes includes other Boston projects like the "Necco Garden", an installation at MIT, composed of geometrically arranged Necco wafers and car tires painted in pastel shades. And "The Splice Garden", based on two classical garden models, a French garden with hedges severely clipped in geometric forms and a Japanese Zen garden with raked paths that intend to mimic nature. Rendered in green aquarium gravel and Astroturf her vision fit in with the lack of water for the site and the inability for the roof to hold up the weight of a real garden.

   Not all fun and games, she transformed the plaza in front HUD in Washington DC into an interesting and friendly space relying on the design motifs of Marcel Brauer, the buildings' architect. And the Jacob Javits Plaza in NYC received the classical treatment of a parterre de broderie made up of green painted NYC park benches.




2. MARTHA SCHWARTZ HAS REDEFINED LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE IN THIS COUNTRY AND CONTINUES TO DO SO INTERNATIONALLY. THIS BOOK DISPLAYS THE DESIGN POTENTIALS IN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AND BY DOING SO QUESTIONS OUR OWN INHIBITIONS AS DEVELOPERS, HOME OWNERS AND ARCHITECTS TO LET LANDSCAPE BECOME BANAL - STAID AND THE EVERYDAY - UNDESIGNED.

No comments about Poster Collection 05: Typotectur, Typography as Architectural Imagery.