Learn AutoCAD LT 2000 for Architects

Rating:
Summary: Great book for Newbies.
Review: I am a new user of AutoCAD LT and have been struggling with it. I have been drafting for over 7 years but am just now making the jump to CAD. This book has been a great help to me. It was easy to follow and I was able to get a good handle on how to actually use AutoCAD LT to draw a set of plans. I found the book to be a great introduction for a new user like myself. Since reading the book, I have been able to complete a couple of jobs using AutoCAD LT and it's nice to get a return on the money and time I invested. I would recommend the book to anyone that wants a good simple intro into architectural drafting using CAD.

Rating:
Summary: Mostly Dissapointed
Review: I just finished going through this book. I am a new AutoCADLT 2000 user and I thought this would be a good way to get up to speed. I have been teaching myself ACLT and using the tutorials that come with ACLT. I was hoping that this book would fill in the blanks and give me a more rounded view of ACLT. In fact, it is a pretty narrow look at the product. I am not an Architect. I am currently reviewing plans from my Architect and another project, both in AC, and I thought it would be handy to be able to edit them.

There are things to like. Chapter two and parts of chapter 3 were OK. I didn't bother with Chapter Six, because it is only interesting if you use "Real Architect", and I don't. The good part about chapter two is that it gives you a good overview of a small subset of drawing commands and gives you a good exercise to practice the commands with. The good part about Chapter 3 is that it shows you some good technique to make sections. Once you have mastered the skills from the chapters, you can draw most basic Architecture.

The bad part is that most of that information could have been imparted in one smaller chapter. I felt like I learned a bit at the start, and then spent more time doing the lesson for the lessons sake rather than learning anything new.

The other major problem with this book is lack of depth. It spent far too much time on very simple commands like 'trim', and very little time talking about scale and printing. Most of the time it mentions scale it is "don't change it, we'll cover it later", and the later coverage was thin. Even with something that it did cover, like 'trim', it was a long drawn out process. It was pretty clear how it worked, but it took forever to for the book to mention how to use cutting edges, which seemed pretty obvious right from the start.

Another area that was frustrating was that for many commands it would tell you to either hit return on the command line or tell you which option to pick without explaining why or what the other options were useful for. It was too much like a cookbook, not enough like a tutorial.

Also, this was just a peeve, but it almost totally ignored the toolbar. Teaching myself AC meant that I knew the toolbar pretty well. It's good to tell the user what the command line keywords are, but it would be useful to mention the toolbar too.

One of the most obvious basic areas that it didn't cover was selection. The difference between draging from right to left vs. left to right, how to unselect something, etc. If I hadn't done the tutorials before hand, I would have been sunk.

This book was an odd mix of assumptions. On the one hand, it assumes that you know the interface fairly well, on the other hand it assumes that you don't know how to use trim and fillet, or at least that you need hours of drilling on the topic.

-mike

Rating:
Summary: Best AutoCAD book I've seen
Review: I really liked this book. It was straight forward and to the point. The authors step by step approach was refreshing and easy to follow. The book uses alot of graphics that really help to clarify each task. The book was laid out in a logical manner and each phase of development of a set of house plans was explained in depth.

The first chapter dealt with the various methods of starting a new drawing and really helped me to get a handle on drawing setup. It also had a good explanation of scales, text and dimension sizes and the use of layers.

Chapter 2 was on how to create a simple floor plan from start to finish. It had a clear explanation on printing the floor plan at the end of the chapter. It also got into creating a custom template drawing for architectural work. I have since created a really nice template drawing of my own that sets up my border, text and dimension styles and a bunch of other things.

Chapter 3 and 4 dealt with creating a foundation plan, roof plan, building sections and the four exterior elevations. The explanations about using paperspace are the best I have ever read and helped to make this confusing concept finally clear to me.

Chapter 5 deals with using an architectural add on program that came on the CD with the book. This is a nifty little program and I ended up buying the full product and use it all the time.

Overall, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a simple, in depth guide to using AutoCAD LT for architectural work.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book for beginning & intermediate cad users
Review: If you're new to cad and you're an architect or draftsperson this is a great book to get started with. The main thrust of the book is to help you put together a set of working drawings for a cottage home. Although the cottage and drawings are basic, the techniques learned can be applied to more complex subjects. Along the way, Padgett does an excellent job of teaching some relatively complicated cad subjects such as working w/ multi-scaled viewports in 'paper space'. The benefits of understanding and applying that useful drafting concept in the real world of deadlines and billable time, alone, made this book well worth the money I spent.