I am a mechanical engineering student in my final year. I want to learn solidworks. I search this forum and finally could find two books. Now I want to know....which book should I start with solidworks 2012 tutorial or Engineering design with solidworks 2012? Both the books are written by David Plachard.
The tutorials John speaks of are found under Help in SolidWorks.
I suspect either book will be fine for you. They are both geared to Beginner to Intermediate users.
Cheers,
Anna
I think you might like this book! SolidWorks 2012 Part I- Basic Tools and Part II Advance by Paul Tran,CSWP,CSWI from SDC Publication. Their web sight is WWW.SDCpublications.com. I hope this give you a different option?
Thank you all of you for taking the time to respond.
I have already worked with inbuild tutorials. I am looking for more practice material.
Now I am confused more than before. I saw the book which James Sir suggested and it seems to be a nice option. Which one should I finalize? I want the book that covers more content. I want to appear for CSWP exam. So please suggest accordingly.
You are going to have to decide for yourself what book will be good for you. There are many, many books published on how to use SolidWorks. What might be good for me may be totally wrong for you depending on the type of learner you are.
Cheers,
Anna
Anna is correct. I bought 2 Planchard books and found them totally useless for my needs. I eventually put them out in the trash.
I still have Howard & Musto but it also employs the tutorial format which is not helpful to me.
I have referred many times to Matt Lombard's Bible which was a single volume back in 2009.
I wanted to know what SW was all about, and how the designers intended that I should use the tools they provided, and why I should use one tool when another seemed to do the same job.
I cannot remember long sequences of mouse clicks, nor infer why I was doing them in the absence of any explanation, so I take nothing away from tutorials.
Anna,
I am astounded at the number of titles that you found on Amazon.
I remember calling in to a bookshop in (was it Blackstone?) near Virgina Tech in the hope of finding some SW titles on the shelf, but there was nothing; so where have all these Amazon books been hiding?
I bought Matt's Bible from my local capital city bookshop but they no longer stock it, and my local university bookshop has nothing.
Having been burned in buying books sight unseen, I probably won't buy any more.
I understand that completely Anna. Place where I am staying.....these books are not available in any store. So I have to order them online. Now, if i have not seen any of the books....ordering them online is bit difficult unless I have the idea about those books. And considering the cost of the books...I cant order all of them.
Thanks for the response.
Is I stated before SolidWorks 2012 Part I and II are good books and has CSWP prep section in them. Or if you have the experience then the Book I would get is Official Certified SolidWorks Professional (CSWP) Certification Guide with Video Instruction. from http://www.sdcpublications.com/Textbooks/Official-Certified-SolidWorks-Professional-CSWP/ISBN/978-1-58503-824-4/ it has a sample chapter that you can look at. I have the last version and it helped me in passing one of the three segments of the CSAP exam I have to finish taking the other two exam.
Also if you have worked all the tutorials in SolidWorks there is a lot more tutorials on simulations if you want to work on these.
If you don't know how to find them let me know, and I will tell you how to find them.
If you set up an account on google play books you will get all the sdc publications on line, or on your iPad and computer etc. you can't zoom in on the pages but you can see enough. They are substantially cheaper, which would help as a student, and you can email sdc for a link to download the files that are needed.
Also the engineering design book from sdc would be a good start to understanding the process of manufacturing from the design point of view. Not so great for helping through cswp though. I used the cswa and cswp exam prep books which were a helpful addition. I bought a heap of books, and also got the SWx books from the VAR to work through. I think it is a personal choice.
Good luck
Hi Trushit,
Check the below link its a great book for you.
http://www.amazon.com/SolidWorks-2014-Black-Book-Weber/dp/1494969343
Dragging up year old threads is not the way to sell books.
Respond to threads with real solutions and then plug your book, "Here is a solution... ... and by the way, if you want to learn more about this topic check this link for a great book for you...."
I would go thru the tutorials first just to give you the basics of Solidworks.