Rating: 
Summary: Instructive but wordy
Review: Pluses: A good self teaching book. With no previous Autocad experience I now feel confident that I can do basic 2-d drawings. The book got me to accomplish what I wanted, to learn basic Autocad, so basically a good recommendation. The pace was a contributator to confidence building.Minuses: It could be written with a third to half less wordiness, the author drags out the instructions and basic Windows operations too much. I feel I should have been able to do the basic drawing in much less text. Chapter 7 was very boring and took forever to get through with very little return for the time spent. And the book only covers an single architectural design. I would like to see other mechanical design example walk-throughs added with shorter text descriptions. More to-the-point. Also it is difficult to find exactly where you learned something when you want to go back and refresh yourself, mainly because of the wordiness.
Rating: 
Summary: Very effective tutorials
Review: The author does a good job of squeezing in lots of techniques into the tutorials. If there was anything I wish that he had included, it's tips and tricks sections and a more robust section on 3d rendering. But the book is still worth 5 stars. I suspect that 3d rendering is really a subject all to itself and probably needs to be covered separately anyways. The only reason I suggest a tips and tricks section is that I feel that after using Autocad that there are nuances with the software that cannot be covered with tutorials, ie what-if scenarios. For instance, I commonly make objects in a layer that stay in that layer despite the fact that I move them to other layers. They refuse to even take on the color of the layer I move them to. Based upon the book's tutorials, this shouldn't be happening. Regardless, the book did what it was supposed to do: I now know Autocad and am already designing things with it.
Rating:
Summary: Very effective tutorials
Review: The author does a good job of squeezing in lots of techniques into the tutorials. If there was anything I wish that he had included, it's tips and tricks sections and a more robust section on 3d rendering. But the book is still worth 5 stars. I suspect that 3d rendering is really a subject all to itself and probably needs to be covered separately anyways. The only reason I suggest a tips and tricks section is that I feel that after using Autocad that there are nuances with the software that cannot be covered with tutorials, ie what-if scenarios. For instance, I commonly make objects in a layer that stay in that layer despite the fact that I move them to other layers. They refuse to even take on the color of the layer I move them to. Based upon the book's tutorials, this shouldn't be happening. Regardless, the book did what it was supposed to do: I now know Autocad and am already designing things with it.
Rating:
Summary: The book's title says it all
Review: This book is a great beginner, at the moment I am about a quarter of the way through the book and am finding it VERY easy to understand and he teaches through practice instead of just explaining each command. I was getting intimidated by all of the 1200-1500 page books i had seen and was glad to find this book which was exactily what i was looking for, a "true beginner's book" stop looking and buy you won't be sorry.
Rating:
Summary: Exelant book for biginners
Review: This book is amazing.. I did not know a thing about AutoCAD but in just 5 easy reading chapters (so far), I have put togeather a design for my house. Everything is explained step by step and the reason why it is done that way is also clear. The book teaches the basics to the more complicated elevations, 3D drawing etc. It covers more than enough to get a good knowlage of AutoCAD. NOTE : this book is based on architecture and not mechanical design. If you want to know how to draw house plans then this is the best book to buy.
Rating:
Summary: Simplifies AUTOCAD 2000 for you!
Review: This book is excellent for architects who want to learn Autocad 2000, and do not have prior experience, as it says. Even with experience it shows different and more efficient ways of drawing architectural drawings in AutoCAD, especially if one is mostly self taught; it shows a variety of commands and their functions through one example that is developed in detail through the book. Even basic things like how to draw a wall and elevations can seem daunting but the instructions go through all that very well. The book could have benefited with more bullet points and less verbiage and more examples. However, the book is very instructive and walks one through the steps very well.
Rating: 
Summary: Good but written for Architects & I'm not..
Review: This is a good book but it is written for architects. I'm a mechanical engineer. Also, it basically has only one project that you progress through from beginning to end of book. I took a que from a previous reviewer and checked out "shrockpublishing.com" and their books worked better for me. (Exercise workbook for Beg. AutoCAD) Easy to follow, 30 separate lessons, includes many exercises and for all disciplines not just architecture. Plus I emailed the author with questions and she answered me.
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