eBook Harnessing Microstation V8 XM Edition ePub

This a great resource for me as I learn Micro Station.

This is a great book if you are a now user and need to start from the scratch. There is a plenty of excercises, on the attached CD. On the other hand, it is written for American market, in other words, all measures are in inches and feet, not my favorites.

This is my personal observation and initial experience with the entire book and the software. The comments posted here have nothing to do with how the authors' decision to present his work. I do not attempt to compare one software to another. It is none of my business to ask why one software calls the title block as REFERENCE and the other calls the title block as "SHEET". I am sure your college professor will have a better answer to your question.

The book is a well organized extension of the Bentley's user help file for its "2-D design and drafting." And the authors have well industrial and academic experience.

The included CD in the back of the book (claimed on p. xxi) has material of chapter 1 thru 13 and "17?" (there was no chapter 17 in the textbook! - see p.xvii). Furthermore, the CD presents very meticulous step-by-step hands-on exercises in chapter 1 to 13. And as soon as it gets to 3-D solid modeling (the non-existence chapter 17 in the CD), all you get is some drawings with dimensions. No step-by-step on how to do it! What a waste for a 30 year experienced professor, who could not show how to construct a true 3-D PARAMETRIC solid modeling technique. Boolean is not a true parametric design.

If you are doing 3-D design right now, then turn to page 121 and enjoy a good laugh at the drawing of the complete bicycle assembly design with some 2-D circles and linear lines (notice that we 3D people did hand over the creation of 2-D views to the 3-D parametric drafting with associative dimensioning software more than 10 years ago!)

For 3-D Boolean's design, you will not get much out of this book. Other authors of Microstation V8 such as Andrew L. Anderson (Microstation V8: An introduction to Computer-Aided Design, 2002) would have done the same thing. They failed to recognized the true potential of 3-D parametric technology in Mechanical design. All the presentations are based on the 3-D primitives. Who can proudly claim that a helical spring can be created with 3-D primitives?

Other needed minor improvements such as on page 12 figure 1-15 the authors want you to access the task Navigation/drawing/linear. And for new users, you will get an impression that the task navigation menu is located on the left of the screen. However, that is not the case. The task Navigation is located on the top right corner of the main menu in the latest Microstation V8 XM High security release (XM does not mean a thing! It just sound like some radio station to me!).

And finally, for 2-D people it is a good book to buy so that you can post page 220, 221 and 223 right in front of your available and visible wall so that you can learn and remember all the o,v,T,B,X,Y,D,A,L,RQ,RA,RE,RV,RZ,GT,GK,GA,WA,P,M,I,N,M,C,K,HA,HS,HU,Q,~,? key-in short cuts! I as 3-D people do envy your 2-D drafting brain power! We 3-D parametric solid modeling people do not have to face such problem at all!
Thank you and have a great day!

I have had two versions of this book before, so I knew what I was buying. The last version SE seemed more comprehensive. The book cover was damaged when I received it, however.