Inside AutoCAD 2005 (Inside)

Rating:
Summary: stable and well tested version
Review: The most common architectural and engineering drawing package, for at least a decade. If you are a mechanical or civil engineer or architect, or a student in those fields, it behooves you to have some passing familiarity with AutoCAD. Now this book gives you the latest version, 2005.

By now, the differences with recent previous editions, like 2004, are incremental. Autodesk is continually refining and adding new features, like improved annotations. The first chapter describes these newbies in 2005. But guess what? If you read through the rest of the book, which essentially describes 2004, then you can see that 2005 is just an incremental upgrade. So if you are currently using the 2004 version, and have no plans to migrate, you may well consider skipping 2005 and waiting for a future edition. The book explicitly acknowledges this strategy. Though the example it gives is the user skipping recent editions like 2004 and now deciding to take up 2005.

What you can expect from the 2005 package is a very stable and well tested edition. A mature development platform. If you are a full time AutoCAD user, you may want to peruse the latest 2005 changes to see if indeed it is time to upgrade.