Product Description

If you want to gain proficiency and expertise with SolidWorks surface modeling, this is the resource for you. You'll learn how to apply concepts, utilize tools, and combine techniques and strategies in hands-on tutorials. This Bible covers the range from sketching splines and shelling to modeling blends and decorative features. Complete with professional tips and real-world examples, this inclusive guide enables you to coax more out of SolidWorks surfacing tools.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34178 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 460 pages

From the Back Cover
Create customized models that are ready for manufacture or prototyping

If you want to gain proficiency and expertise with SolidWorks surface modeling, this is the resource for you. You'll learn how to apply concepts, utilize tools, and combine techniques and strategies in hands-on tutorials. This Bible covers the range from sketching splines and shelling to modeling blends and decorative features. Complete with professional tips and real-world examples, this inclusive guide enables you to coax more out of SolidWorks surfacing tools.

• Gain total control over splines

• Discover when to apply Boundary, Loft, or Fill surface features

• Make use of SolidWorks direct editing capabilities

• Interchange between solids and surfaces

• Learn to use master model techniques

• Work from digitized data

• Utilize model evaluation techniques

Companion Web site
The companion Web site, www.wiley.com/go/solidworkssurfacingbible, contains start to finish points for the tutorials in the book as well as finished example models.

About the Author
Matt Lombard is an independent SolidWorks consultant. Because of his popularity with SolidWorks user groups and through his SolidWorks Web site and online forums, Matt has built a reputation as a go-to resource for everything SolidWorks. He also serves on the SolidWorks User Group Network committee.

Customer Reviews

Book great! Sample files... not so good.
The book is perfect for small companies or individual users that need training on surfacing but don't have the resources for classroom time. The book covers all of the tools available and then goes into the sections that really help, actual modeling techniques. The author goes through several curvy models and shares his thought processes for picking the best modeling approaches. Extremely helpful for those who aren't sure where to start.
On the down side, the same companies or individuals who don't have the resources for classroom time are also likely not able to afford to continually upgrade. And so if they have Solidworks 2007 or earlier then the samples files, (which are 2008), cannot be used. This puts a big damper on the learning potential. Sample files are one of the best ways to study modeling techniques, but in this case they are out of reach for a potentially large group. It should not be a surprise to the author that not everyone upgrades. In fact his September 23, 2008 blog entry (written well after the book came out) has this in it - "I still have projects in 2007. I get rare projects in 2008, and I've already done several projects in 2009."
So, good job on the book. Well written and a fun read in sections. But not being able to take advantage of the sample files hurts.

Does not cut the mustard
The book is absolutely not for the beginner or the intermediate user. It should say Experts ONLY! And even then? I've been using SolidWorks for approximately 15 months, and got very frustrated trying to understand the book.

It does have many items on surfacing, mostly theory, but does not provide many practical tutorials or detail instructions. It reminds me of a person jumping off a cliff who thinks they can fly. There is no CD in the book with models to back engineer, if you can not follow the text. The book does not cut the mustard and the writing style is poor. I think I need a VAR class?

High quality and unique
This is the only book like it I have found available anywhere for SolidWorks. It is better than the surfacing book for Rhino because of the detail of data. What I like most about this book is that it explains why things work or even why they don't work. This is important for real users. Its definitely not a beginners book, but I've been using SW for about 3 years, having used Pro/ENGINEER in another job for several years, and all of the concepts were understandable. The book shows the strengths and flaws of SolidWorks for surfacing work. This book is in color with good quality paper, better than the Solidworks 2009 Bible by the same author (black and white and printed on thin paper).

One thing I found interesting was that it is grouped into different sections,one for just explaining features, another for showing examples of what features can do, and the last section for showing general techniques consisting of several features, like how to make smooth end caps, or fading a sharp edge into a smooth face, and some wacky stuff too. It does a good job of showing a wide range of techniques.

I think if you really do work like this, you will learn much from this book. If you are a casual SolidWorks user, it may be too much work to understand it.