Technical Drawing (11th Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Profoundly Frustrating
Review: As a freshman engineering major, I have been compelled to use Technical Drawing for a graphics course. This has been a profoundly frustrating experience. It seems that the authors, in their zeal to attain unto the dry, lifeless style characteristic of most professional engineering publications, also unintentionally created a text which is superlatively unclear.

I am recurrently astonished at the utter incomprehensibility of entire paragraphs. I will read a section, cynically assert that it communicates nothing, read it over a dozen more times, show it to others who in turn read it a dozen times, only to have my first conclusion affirmed.

There are extremely blatant contradictions.

Terms are used at the beginning of a chapter and not defined until the end.

It speaks voluminously about how critical it is to follow the prescribed techniques, only to devote less-than-the-bare-minimum amount of space to the actual descriptions of those techniques.

The review questions are frequently unrelated to the content they are supposed to be reinforcing.

The tone of the ($110!) book is consistent with works in which a committee of inexperienced authors who are assigned to write on something they know nothing about (not unlikely, for there are precious few engineers who enjoy writing). Technical Drawing may well be a decent-enough reference book--a tome capable of reminding one of what he/she already knows--but in my brief experience, it cannot educate.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best sources available
Review: This book is loaded with technical information for the dratsman and designer. A must have for anyone who is in the mechanical technology field.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best text books ever written...
Review: This text was the basic drafting manual that I used during my technical education; its use did not end with school, however, since I refer to it frequently in my occupation. It tells everything that needs to be explained and described in the general drawing problems that might be encountered in industrial practice. It contains excellent descriptions and illustrations for: Drawing Threads, Fasteners & Springs Geometric Constructions Clear, Concise instructions in using Drafting Instruments, (before the time of Computer Aided Drafting & Desing, in any case). An Excellent overview of the Industrial Design & Development Process, (which I wish my supervisors would read). Sectional Drawing. This book is to drafting what Machinery's Handbook, of the Industrial Press, is to the metal working industries. There are a variety of Drafting Textbooks available, but none are incrementally better, let alone drasticaly better.